The Delena Series
by silverfoxpunk
Summary: A series of one-shots for Delena fans, some serious, some fun, but all romantic. I hope you enjoy them.
1. Finding My Way Home

**This will be a series of separate one-shots when I feel like adding to them. But here is the first. Enjoy. Please do feel free to review.**

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><p><strong>Finding My Way Home<strong>

Elena lay on her bed with her eyes open listening to Damon chatting with Stefan downstairs. She suddenly sat upright and swung her feet over the side of the bed. Her hair hung down either side of her face in dark curtains and her thoughts began to take a definite shape. She couldn't do this any more. Couldn't be here with the two of them.

She got up and began to pack.

* * *

><p>"Where are you going?" Stefan said as she dragged her heavy bag down the stairs. He went to pick it up but she wouldn't let him.<p>

"Home."

Damon raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"Er, I don't think so." Stefan said, crossing his arms.

"Stefan, you can do what you like, but I am not staying in this house any longer."

"Fine. I'll come with you." He said, picking up her bag and slinging it over his shoulder as though it was a feather pillow.

"No. You will not." She replied with steel in her voice, wrestling the bag back from him, then immediately dropping it.

Damon smirked. He crossed his arms and enjoyed the show.

"You can sleep where you like, sweetheart, but I will be watching you all hours of the day." Stefan gave her a smile. He leaned towards her, "I hope you enjoy having a peeping Tom."

"I'm sure you'll do what you feel you have to, Stefan." Elena said. She deliberately didn't look at Damon, but could feel him watching her with interest.

She began to move towards the door, struggling with her bag. When she opened it, she looked back at Stefan. He motioned two fingers towards his eyes, then back to her.

"I'll be watching." He said.

She shut the door behind her.

* * *

><p>"Jesus, Damon, you made me jump!" Elena exclaimed on finding the vampire lying on her bed with his arms behind his head.<p>

"Okay, why have you _really_ returned to the homestead, Miss O'Hara?" He asked with curiosity, sitting up to face her.

"Because I wanted my own space." She replied, busying herself by putting away the rest of her clothes and ignoring him.

Damon looked at her with suspicion. "In a boarding house with sixteen beds, you didn't have enough space? I'm not buying it."

"Can you please just leave, Damon?" She said, rubbing her forehead with her fingertips and looking exasperated.

Damon frowned. He had never seen her look so tired and frustrated. Normally he would do the exact opposite of what she wanted, but today he decided he would do as she asked.

"Okay, sure. Goodnight." He got up and left through her door like a normal person, rather than use her window as usual.

As soon as he was gone, Elena looked at her door.

When he left, it was as though all the air in the room had been sucked out with him.

She sat on her bed, the t-shirt still in her hands.

* * *

><p>Damon had walked to Elena's house and now he began the long walk home. It was dusk and he thrust his hands into his overcoat pockets. Normally he never felt the cold, but today he shivered.<p>

A father with his toddler walked past. The dad lifted the little boy high above his head and the child looked out in front of him with his arms spread wide. He laughed with pure joy because he was flying.

Damon stopped in his tracks as they passed him by.

Flying. She made him feel like he was flying.

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><p>Elena suddenly felt as alone as the day her parents died.<p>

* * *

><p>Once she started walking out of the house towards his, her walk became a jog.<p>

As soon she began to jog, her jog became a sprint.

* * *

><p>Damon turned around and began to retrace his steps. As each step took him closer back to Elena, he needed to move quicker. He broke into a run.<p>

When she raced around the corner, they collided. He pulled her back at arms length, she was breathing hard.

"Why did you go?" She said. "You _never_ go when I ask you to."

"I thought..."

"You thought wrong. You're always wrong." Her anger flared because she hated the way she felt inside. She looked up at him. "I, I..." She couldn't finish her sentence. He still gripped her upper arms, but now his thumb began to stroke her in little circular movements he couldn't control. It wasn't his fault, he just always wanted to touch her skin.

"You _what_, Elena?" He asked - his voice low.

She looked up at him and finally met his eyes. "I can't be there any more, under your roof with him always there - when I... When I..." He said nothing, his thumb stopped moving against her arm. "I want you, Damon." She said, the thoughts she had not dared to speak aloud now finally verbalized.

Damon's hands tightened on her arms and he pulled her closer to him. She went limp. "Don't say it if you don't mean it." He warned.

She shook her head as though incredulous that he would think she would say anything so dangerous without meaning it. "I can't breathe without you!" She shouted, half desperate, half furious. When she finally looked at him she was still breathing hard. If she was expecting to be kissed, she guessed wrong.

Damon turned her around and pulled her under his coat, bringing her tight against his side. Immediately he set off at a brisk pace back towards her house. She stumbled along beside - forced to keep her arms around him, or take a tumble. Under his wool coat it seemed like a cocoon of him; his scent, his proximity, his protection. She felt safe.

Her hand around Damon's back slipped under the fabric of his sweater so her fingers felt his skin. The touch seemed illicit - dangerous. As soon as he felt it, his pace picked up.

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><p>As they entered her drive Elena tried to take her hand away to feel for her keys, but Damon strode on ahead and broke the door with his hand without even missing a step. As soon as they were inside she found herself lifted like a child. Her hair fell over Damon's shoulder as he sped upstairs with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.<p>

He pushed open her bedroom door, turned and fell back on the bed so that she landed on top of him. She moved so she straddled him and pulled her long-sleeve tee over her head. He wriggled out of his coat and undid his shirt. She put her hands behind her back to unclasp her bra and he stopped her with a gentle hand on her arm.

She smiled shyly. He pulled out from under her and moved onto his knees and tugged his shirt completely free, dropping it to the floor. He moved forwards closing the gap between them, his naked chest only millimeters from her body. She tucked her hair behind her ears nervously.

Slowly and gently he reached around her back with his right hand and she felt his fingers under her bra, pulling it taut to release the tension, then unclasping it.

At first he didn't let go, but when he finally did, the fabric fell open and he ran his fingers very very lightly down her back to the band of her jeans, then back up her spine to her hairline, where his fingers caressed the back of her neck. She looked into his eyes. The goosebumps on her body were not because she was cold.

He moved both his hands onto her shoulders and with his fingers slowly and very gently pushed the bra straps from her shoulders. Her instinctive response was to grab the falling lingerie to her body shyly as she looked anywhere but at him. He ran his fingers slowly down her shoulder and arm and when they reached the hand clutching at her bra, he softly placed them over hers and she relaxed her fingers beneath his.

_Elena_, his fingers seemed to say, _it__'__s __okay __to __let __go._

The bra slipped off her shoulders and she let it fall away. He moved his hand to her face and from there he let his fingers brush down her neck across her collarbone and down to her breast. When he was there, he tenderly cupped it and let his thumb trail softly over her sleek nipple, causing it to gather and harden.

She let her head roll back as he touched her. He took his time, using both his hands to stroke and fondle every part of her upper body. She closed her eyes and felt his fingers trace the space behind her armpits, and the place where her hair was soft and downy at the back of her neck, to the tiniest curve of her belly and the whorls of her fingertips. She wanted to reach out and touch him, but she was afraid to interrupt his tender examination. She wanted him to kiss her, but although he stayed tantalizingly close, his lips never brushed hers. She opened her eyes and looked at him.

Suddenly he met her gaze. He slid his hand into the strands of her hair and with his fingers on the back of her head pulled her gently in to his lips at last. She slid her arms around his cool naked shoulders, pressed herself against his body until she found herself falling backwards with him into oblivion, or maybe just into her bed sheets, it all seemed the same.

It wasn't just a kiss. It was the smell of Spring rain on asphalt, it was the light after a storm, the taste of the perfect strawberry, her first footfall in the snow, the first time she held her baby brother in her arms, and it was kissing Damon... Kissing Damon. Kissing _Damon_.

He pulled away, his eyes almost scared. He was overwhelmed with the sense that she was the one - the one who gave his long life meaning. The one he never knew he was looking for. His head buzzed with the thought 'I am home'.

Their bodies were electric with the need that passed between them. He was hard for her, his erection pressing insistently into her thigh. She was too shy to take his jeans off for him, her hand circled the well at the base of his spine instead. He briefly moved away from her and disrobed before coming back to unzip her jeans, and pulling them slowly from her hips. She shyly looked at his naked body as he did so, his erection an almost feral expression of his longing that seemed such a mismatch with the gentle tenderness he was showing her. She was slick with desire already, but to see him so eager to be inside her made her pulsate with need.

He kissed her secret places. His tongue traced through the dark tangle of hair between her legs until it slipped between her folds and found her burning center. He placed his arms under her thighs and teased her with increasing urgency. She felt like she had no substance any more, she was just instinct and response. The realities of the world happened around her, but they were distant echoes whose ripples could not stir her. All there was was Damon - dark brother, damaged soul, mercurial demon, and the light with which she lit her life, making her moan until there was nothing else that existed outside of this feeling.

Her whole body felt that familiar, sudden and blissful release. She knew she convulsed in her heart as much as in her body. Her eyes were tight-shut. She felt his hands move away from her thighs as he pulled his body up and rested between her open legs. He moved his hand down to guide himself into her and when he entered her it was the only time he cried out. It came from deep inside him. His arms on either side of her body took his weight, and he looked down on her and said, "I love you." He captured her open mouth with a kiss, sliding his tongue over hers so that she tasted herself on his moist lips. Inside he eased open her walls that were slick with wetness.

Her hands slid down his back and felt the texture of his skin. They gripped his flexing behind as he rocked his hips to move himself deeper inside her. She found his rhythm and matched it with her own. He increased his speed. In the following moment, she let out a long and deep sigh of pleasure - her lips tickling his ear - and he came, shuddering and roaring to his sweet finish.

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><p>Lying together, their perspiration mingling and their arms looped lazily around each other, he enjoyed the sound of her breathing. When she could bring herself to move again she looked at him and he lay half a dozen quick kisses on her lips, before collapsing back on the bed.<p>

"I'm sorry, I needed you too much. Wanted you for so long." He said.

She shook her head. "Don't apologize for the way you love me." She said.

But he was solemn. Inside her he had come so quickly. Everything was too much, too much hunger, too much need.

He pulled out his arm from under her. "I need to go take care of something. I'll be right back." He said.

She grabbed at his arm. "Don't leave."

"Elena, I have to feed."

"Then feed from me."

He shook his head. "I might not be able to stop."

"You'll stop." He looked at her doubtfully. "Damon. I know you'll stop."

He looked at her, nodded and felt his face change, she never moved from her position wrapped in his arms. He pulled her wrist to his lips and she shook her head and pulled away.

"You've changed your mind? That's okay, I can-"

"No, take it from my throat."

"Really?"

She nodded. "I love the feel of you right here." She indicated her neck.

He hesitated for a moment longer, then he moved on top of her. He looked at her, his red eyes staring down into hers. She wasn't afraid. She smiled.

He kissed her throat and then he placed his teeth near her vein, bit down, and felt his teeth sliding into her flesh and direct into her rushing, gushing life force. She gave a little cry of pain, but then the tension left her body and she moved her arms around him until she was hugging him, and stroking his back as he fed from her. He pulled out with a start.

"What's wrong?" She said.

He looked at her with surprise, his human face returning again. He spoke so quietly she had to strain to hear him, "Nobody's ever held me before when I have fed from them."

"Damon, I will _always_ hold you when you are near me." She said with surprise.

He rolled away and climbed off the bed, striding to the corner of the room. She sat up, looking worried. "Did I say something wrong?" When he didn't respond she followed him. "Damon?" She said hesitantly touching his shoulder. He turned around and pulled her tightly into his arms. "Damon, are you upset?" She was in a state of shock, she had never seen him cry before. Not ever. She wasn't even sure that he could.

She held him even more closely, biting her bottom lip and feeling bad that somehow she had upset him. Her hand wove into his hair and she pulled his head in to her.

"Come back to bed." She said, kissing his cheek. He didn't say anything, but let himself be lead by the hand. She slid under the duvet and wiggled over making room for him. He stepped in, seeming to be more himself now his moment of emotion had passed.

"Hold me." She asked, and he moved towards her so she could snuggle into his arms. He kissed her forehead and stroked her hair. He began to pepper her face with little kisses. She smiled, as his lips found hers. She began to stroke her hand down his body, and very soon, he was hard again. He pulled away, holding her face in his hands.

"Elena, one day I'm going to ask you to stay with me forever, and if the answer is no, I can't do this with you again."

"My forever, or your forever?"

"Whichever one you want."

"Then one day, I will answer yes."

Damon smiled. He rolled over on top of her, and slipped his tongue into her mouth. She moved her legs until they were around him. And he whispered to her that this time, with her blood to fuel him, he could go on all night.

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><p>Outside Elena's window, Stefan's hands pressed so hard on the wood that his knuckles went white. He couldn't really look, but neither could he look away.<p>

And as the couple made love again, his fingernails carved divots in the windowsill.


	2. Thirty Two to One

**Thirty-Two to One**

"**I am in fear, in awful fear, and there is no escape for me." **

**Dracula, Bram Stoker**

Klaus hung up on Stefan and wanted to fling his phone as far as he could just to have the satisfaction of hearing it smash. However he resisted the urge and turned his anger inside of himself, just as he always did. Anger was what fueled him, it's what kept him alive.

He called one of his hybrids instead.

"Klaus, they attacked us. They had wolfsbane grenades, some of us are down." Todd said, as soon as he answered.

"Never mind that, they'll recover in time. Listen to me. I want you to bring me the doppelgänger - alive."

"Where is she?"

"The Salvatore boarding house. Damon will be with her. Stefan too for all I know."

"What do you want us to do if we find the vampires?"

Klaus thought about it for less than a nano-second. "Kill them."

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><p>Damon was stewing after his call with Katherine. He wondered where Stefan was, because when he found out he was going to rip out his heart and feed it to him.<p>

He was worried too. Klaus was alive and more of a danger now to them than he ever was.

He walked up the stairs and left Elena, whose worried look he couldn't deal with right now. He marched into his room and slammed his door.

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><p>Elena sat down with her hands pressed between her knees. She didn't know what to do. She was worried about Damon, and truly scared about Klaus' next move.<p>

She wondered where Stefan was and what he planned to do now he free from his compulsion. Why hadn't he come home to explain what was going on? It wasn't because he was afraid of Damon. She knew the two of them would probably crack each other's heads for a while and break some furniture, then when the dust settled she would finally get her chance to find out why he had done what he did.

There had to be far more to it than Stefan gaining his freedom. She was certain he would have stayed forever indentured to Klaus if it had guaranteed her and Damon's safety.

What did it mean that he had his humanity back, but had not returned to her?

Katherine's call had unsettled her as well, just as everything about that woman did. Damon had used Katherine to keep her safe - but how had Katherine used him? Because it was inevitable she had in some way. Was she still stringing him along? To what gain?

Elena's own feelings for Damon were always somewhat clouded by her doppelgänger. It made her deeply uncomfortable that he had been in love with Katherine so long - a woman who could pass for her at a moment's notice. Something about that felt wrong. It put a distance between them that sometimes seemed insurmountable.

She wanted to ask Damon about it, but to do so would be tantamount to admitting she had feelings for him (even though apparently that was now obvious to everyone).

She sighed. Only five minutes ago they had shared another 'moment'. She felt her resolve crumbling and her heart leading her head. What would have happened if Katherine hadn't called?

So many questions. So many uncertainties.

Perhaps she should just go home. Her _real_ home that was. Sometimes she missed the life that she and Jer had shared. Even the days when they just squabbled over chores. They were simpler times. Happy times.

But there was no going back. She had chosen this path a long time ago.

She got up and returned to the room she now called her own.

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><p>Damon put on some music to distract him and opened the fifty year old malt he had been given as a gift. He only drank it during celebrations, or times of stress - the balance of which seemed unfairly weighted towards the latter.<p>

His mind wandered to Katherine as he sipped at his liquor. If he was honest, he couldn't entirely bring himself to regret the years he waited for her. She was dynamic and beautiful, and had a fire inside her that had fueled his devotion. He'd have followed her to the ends of the earth, to hell and back. It was love. Or so he thought.

Until now.

Elena.

When he thought of her, his stomach flip-flopped. He had never felt this way about anyone before. It made a mockery of what he had previously believed was love. Sometimes thinking of her brought him actual physical pain. He stayed up night after night analyzing a conversation, a note, or a look they had shared - just to decide that he wasn't going mad and that she felt the same way. When she touched his skin, it felt warm for hours afterwards.

He had turned to booze, other women, anger, depression and denial, but none of his usual go-to's had worked this time. She was under his skin for good.

He downed his drink and reached for the bottle. So this was to be his last round? Typical. Everything about that woman signaled the end - even when it came to his damn whisky. She was driving him mad. Just having her in his house was torture.

Sullenly he added ice to his glass to make the drink last and that was when he heard a downstairs window smash.

His head snapped up.

They had come for her.

* * *

><p>Elena called Caroline and left her a voicemail asking her to ring as soon as she could. She then called Bonnie who said Jer had just left her house and returned back home. She said they were both safe and sound, but they were also worried about her. Bonnie promised to work on finding a spell that meant the boarding house was once again safe under Elena's guardianship.<p>

Elena decided that there was nothing that could be done right now about Klaus. Ric would want to know everything about what had gone on today, but it could wait until the morning. Right now she was tired and scared, so she turned to what she knew would calm her down. School work.

She plugged in her headphones and tapped at her laptop. Suddenly she heard the muffled sound of breaking glass somewhere in the house.

She removed her headphones and frowned. Had Damon smashed another whisky glass? Suddenly her phone beeped with a text message.

_Are you in your room? Hide. I'm coming for you._

Her heart skipped a beat. Was Damon overreacting? Since she had died, anyone could enter this house without an invitation. If Klaus had sent his hybrids after her, she was in trouble. No, they _both_ were. Damon definitely wasn't overreacting.

The room she was in was big, but it wasn't exactly kitted out with hiding places. Her choices were the classic ones - under the bed, or in the closet. She choose the former.

She grabbed the stake and the single wolfsbane grenade she always kept in her room, and her cell. She got down on her knees and shimmied under the bed, switching her phone to silent as she did so. She texted Damon.

_Yes, __I__'__m __in __my __room_. _Be __careful. __Don__'__t __take __any __risks._

She then had an additional thought and sent a new message.

_Leave without me if you can. _

She received a message straight back.

_I won't leave you._

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><p>Damon went into his bathroom, which had earlier that day served as a grenade making factory. He cursed the fact that they had made so few. Well there was no time now to construct more, he would have to make do with what was left - which was just two.<p>

He opened the antique wooden chest that was in his room, slid out the drawer and broke it into kindling. He went to his bed and ripped off the pillowcase and stuffed it with what he had. He wished it was more. He checked his cell was safe in his back pocket, then went to his window. Tying the pillowcase firmly to his belt, he carefully looked outside. Six hybrids that he could see. Another three looked like they were hidden in the tree line. Another two were moving across the open ground and making for his front door. From this angle he couldn't see which window had been broken, but he had to assume others were already making their way inside the house.

He slid his window open and climbed carefully onto the balcony.

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><p>Elena was lying under the bed wondering how the hell it was going to help her. If the hybrids broke in, they weren't exactly going to take a quick look around and say 'she's not here', and then leave. Hiding was not going to protect her. She crawled back out.<p>

If Klaus was crazy enough to try a full scale attack on this house, then clearly he had numbers on his side. They were in trouble. Even Damon's strength had its limits.

She was no damsel in distress; she was a smart and capable woman with a phone and a laptop.

She opened up the screen and logged into Skype. Jer's face was the first she saw. She turned the sound down very low.

"Hey Elena. Wassup?" He said. She put her finger over her mouth indicating he should be silent. He frowned. He immediately knew something was wrong. Elena mouthed 'Get help.'

"Where are you?" He mouthed back.

"Boarding House."

"What's happening?"

"Hybrids."

"Shit."

She nodded. Yes, shit. Big time.

"Shall I get Ric?" He asked.

She looked away suddenly, hearing the sound of people running in the hallway.

"Too many. No time. Got to go. Send help."

She switched off Skype, quickly wrote and sent two emails. She knew she would have to stop using the laptop any second and be silent. The hybrids were part vampire and would have the additional good hearing that came with that.

On her phone she texted Damon. _Help __on __its __way._

Damon didn't receive the text, he was too busy traversing his rooftop. Elena's room was six windows down from his. He had to move fast and silently if he was to get there without getting the attention of the lookouts in the trees. He had his back against the slopping roof and he was walking as fast as he could without disturbing the tile.

He was moving too fast, and slipped on moss. A tile worked free and he had to watch with horror as it tumbled to the ground and smashed noisily. He froze, but it was too late. He was spotted.

The hybrids were fast and they were strong. The vampire inside them allowed them to jump great to heights, and the wolf inside them gave them speed, balance and ferocity. Three of them climbed up the walls as though they were not even obstacles.

He was surrounded and outnumbered. He slipped his pillowcase open as they positioned themselves on the roof around him, and armed himself with a stake.

The first one to attack was a woman, she ran at him lightly across the tile and when he leapt over her head, she leapt up too, turned and grabbed his throat with such savagery, that he knew their orders were to kill him. His back hit the tile and smashed a hole in the roof the length of his body. He took her down with him though and smacked the stake into her throat. He pulled it out again, keeping it in his hand. She gurgled in her death throes and he kicked her violently over the side of the roof.

He didn't have time to hear the sickening thud of her body hitting the floor before the next one was on him. This one landed like a wolf over his body on all fours, and tried to bite him. He got a healthy knee-shot into the man's groin before distracting him with the stake on one hand, then thrusting his other into the man's chest cavity and ripping out his heart.

The final hybrid stayed poised to strike. He was a large African-American, and seemed brighter than the others. He waited patiently for Damon to get to his feet. The internal beams of Damon's roof were now exposed and it would take very little for him to fall through the hole in the tile and smash through them. Damon moved back from the hole, hoping that the large man in front of him would make the mistake of assuming that the damage was not that bad.

He did not. The hybrid leapt over the hole and landed carefully, punching Damon so far across the roof that he overshot the area he had originally planned to climb down from into Elena's window. Damon lay momentarily senseless. He knew that the phone in his back pocket was smashed. Communication with Elena was cut off.

The hybrid was on him already biting at him. Damon barely had time to come to his senses and hold him at arms' length. This hybrid was terrifyingly strong. His large hands moved up through Damon's arms and pushed them aside. He head-butted the vampire and whilst Damon shook his head free of the daze, he snapped Damon's arm. Damon cried out and the hybrid pushed his hand into Damon's chest. It was the last thing he did. With Damon's good hand he stuck the stake into the back of the hybrid's neck. When he fell to one side Damon took a wolfsbane grenade and thrust it into the mans' face.

The hybrid slid sideways off the edge of the roof. Damon panted. His chest began to heal fast; his rib bones were brittle but mended quickly, but his broken arm would take longer to mend. It was time he didn't have. He could hear from the hole in the roof that the hybrids were inside the house and methodically ransacking the place. He hoped to God that Elena was well-hidden. He pulled his broken arm in close to his body with his good one, and took off back towards her window. Climbing down off the roof would be tricky. He had to find another way in.

When he got to where he thought the window was. He decided that to drop in would be easier than to climb. His chest hurt like a bitch as he stamped heavily on the roof, breaking a new hole in the tile. His attention was taken by the fact that four other hybrids had now climbed up on the roof and were stalking their way over to him.

* * *

><p>Elena jumped up from her seat on the bed and looked at where the bits of dust on the ceiling were falling down above her head. Someone was trying to break through. She had a fifty-fifty chance that it meant rescue. She didn't like those odds.<p>

She looked to the door. She had already considered dragging every bit of furniture that was in the room against it, but that would hold back the hybrids for no time at all, and the noise of doing it was more likely to give away her location quicker. They were in the room next to hers now, she had run out of time. She clutched the wolfsbane grenade in one hand and her stake in the other and briefly closed her eyes. If she was going to die today, she hoped it would be quick. Maybe Damon could still get away. Maybe.

Chunks of ceiling plaster were falling into the room and suddenly a foot kicked through. She pulled the pin on her grenade and kept her hand on the detonator. She crouched. _Make __your __body __a __smaller __target. __Punch __hard __and __fast. _She could barely her internal thoughts over her own heartbeat.

More hybrids were running up the stairs. She knew they were leaving the room next door. She watched as a second foot in the ceiling hole joined the first. She tightened her grip on the weapons in her hands. The body in the ceiling dropped through it like liquid and landed like a cat on her floor. Damon's eyes found hers and barely had time to smile before the hybrids shouldered her door and were inside.

"Get down!" Elena shouted to Damon, who sped into the farthest corner of the room. Elena hurled the grenade into the heart of the three hybrids now in her room. It exploded in the face of one, who fell immediately to the floor. The two behind him covered their eyes and screamed. Damon had their hearts ripped out before they knew what had hit them. Elena ran over to him, he took her hand and they clambered over the fallen bodies and on to the landing.

"Stay close." He hissed as four hybrids on the stairs and two more on the landing came at him. Elena cowered behind him, still clutching the stake in her hands. Damon kicked out at the woman who came at him. He immediately went under as two more from the stairs jumped him too in a mass of snarling yellow-eyed sinew and muscle.

One of the hybrids on the stairs took the opportunity to grab Elena. It was the last thing he did. She plunged her stake into his heart. Damon's pillow case had fallen from his belt and a grenade rolled her way. She reached for it, but another hybrid had her up on his shoulder and half way down the stairs before she could touch it. As she bumped down the stairs she reached out to Damon. He saw her through a blackened eye as one of the hybrids re-broke his arm, another kicked in three of his ribs.

No. She would not be taken from him. Not today. Not ever.

Elena thumped, scratched, kicked and wriggled in the arms of her captor. He was almost at the front door when she felt herself falling towards the ground. She rolled free of her captor's body wondering what had happened. She looked up and found herself staring into Damon's eyes. His bloody hand was suddenly in hers and she was being lifted to her feet. Two hybrids came into the room and again they were surrounded as the recovered ones on the landing leapt down. She looked at Damon. He was battered, bruised and weaponless - coated in blood that may or may not be his own. He didn't hesitate. He smashed his coffee table and they both grabbed wood from it and stood back to back.

As the first hybrids came at her, she felt Damon's arms either side of her head, his body pressed against her front as he staked both of them behind her. She was still in shock, when he lifted her high up, and slid her over his shoulder so she was facing the other way. She dropped to her feet on the other side of his back. She could feel his spine pressing against hers. She was shaking, but she brandished her stake. _Look like __you __mean __it. _Alaric had told her_. __Never __let __them __know __you __are __scared._

With two of their number dead at their feet, the hybrids hissed, spat and feigned, but did not make their attack. Damon and Elena circled on the spot back-to-back. Eventually a hybrid ran forward to attack Elena. Damon dipped back under her arm, spinning her out of harm's way at the end of one of his hands almost like they were dancing, he grabbed the hybrid by the ear using his hand with the broken wrist. He put the hybrid down and plunged his hand into her chest, ignoring the shooting pains that ripped through his body. Elena, wide eyed, was pulled back into his arms before the hybrid she had been spun towards could get a grip on her. Damon held her by her waist and she faced him nose to nose. He barely had time to see the anxiety in her eyes, before two of the others launched at him. He dipped Elena backwards, and she went with it, trusting him all the way. Over the top of her he grabbed one hybrid by the throat and threw him into the other. He righted Elena and told her to run.

Both of them raced outside, hand in bloody hand. Damon was blinking because something sticky kept oozing into his eye. Out in the driveway, Elena was breathing hard. She was clutching at his fingers and he felt her hair blow into his face. He pulled her in close against him so her back rested against his chest. He whispered in her ear, as the hybrids still outside and those on the rooftop began to close in on them.

"When I tell you to, you run, and you don't look back."

"No!"

"Do it, Elena!" He begged angrily, casting his eyes around the hybrids who were slowly circling and drawing ever closer. "Do it for Stefan. Keep yourself alive."

"I'm not leaving you! For Stefan _or_ for you." She said, her voice both stubborn but scared.

"Don't argue with me!" Damon said desperately. "I'll give you as much time as I can. But you have to run fast."

Hot, angry tears sprang from her eyes, and she said again firmly. "I'm not leaving you."

The air filled with a low growl that came from the ten or so hybrids emerging from the windows of the upper floors and the door of the house, from the forest to their right. The sound built and built, until they began to howl. The pack was growing and it was unstoppable.

Time slowed down for Damon. At that precise moment he could feel the air lifting every tiny hair on his skin. Elena's hand in his felt like the softest silk he had ever touched, the thumping of her heart the rhythm of his world. He could smell the lavender from his garden and the iron in the blood that seeped down his face. He could hear his broken bones mending inside of him. Elena's hair blew across his face once again and he could count every single strand. On the back of her neck, he could pinpoint each individual bead of perspiration.

He was going to die here today. He was going to die for her and it didn't matter. If this is what his time on this planet had been for - this very moment - then he was glad for every second of suffering, for every bad decision, every experience of anger and hurt that lead him to this very time and place. This gave his life meaning.

He took a deep breath and breathed in her scent. She interwove her hand with his - her fingertips touching his grazed knuckles which had not healed because he was growing weaker.

"I love you." He whispered and then the wolves leapt.

"_RUUUUUUUUNNNNNNN!__" _He let go of her hand and pushed her away, pulling up his broken body and fighting like the demon he was, because her life depended on it.

Eventually, he couldn't keep the biting teeth at bay any longer, he was slipping under. His body wasn't recovering from the punishing bruising it was taking. All he could feel were the hits to his broken rips and gut that were slowly taking him one step closer to the finishing bite that would see him dead.

This was it. This was the end. Did he last long enough for her to make it to the trees? Why could he smell her blood? Had he failed her?

He swung his final punch with his blackened knuckles making contact. He was going down.

And then it stopped, it all just stopped. There was light again. And the whistling, thudding sounds he had heard suddenly became clear to him as bullets. A helicopters' searchlight found him. He raised his bruised hand with its slowly mending broken wrist to shade his eyes from the light.

* * *

><p>"Is he okay?" Ric asked Caroline as Damon walked away and sat on the stoop of his house, away from the group who had come to save his and Elena's lives.<p>

"I think he just wants some time alone." She said. "He's still upset because I told him I would give Elena my blood to heal her - he'd done enough."

"That gash on her leg looked nasty." Ric said.

"If it hadn't have been for him, she wouldn't have been here to bleed." Caroline said with a telling look. She folded her arms and walked away to chat to Bonnie. Ric looked over to Damon with concern. He toyed with what to do, but decided to leave him.

Caroline and Bonnie walked over to the Sheriff. Her men were arresting the last of the hybrids, subduing them using a combination of methods which her daughter's boyfriend had advised them on. Tyler had stayed away from the attack, but had warned Caroline that it was going to happen. Something inside him meant he could not bring himself to take action against the other hybrids.

"Thank goodness Jeremy called me." Sheriff Forbes said. "We were nearly too late." She gave her daughter a meaningful look. "This is still a good town. This 'Klaus' will be dealt with." She said fiercely. "Carol agrees with me." Caroline nodded.

* * *

><p>"This is <em>our<em> town." Mayor Lockwood said into the back of the police van before the deputy got to shut the door on the assembled, beaten, hybrids inside. "You're not welcome here." She added, and slammed the door shut herself.

* * *

><p>Jer had hold of his sister and wouldn't let her go.<p>

"I thought I'd lost you! When you sent me that email, I've never been so worried."

"I needed you to know how much I love you."

"I know, Elena, I know." He kissed her on the head and finally let her go. Caroline's blood had healed her and she could walk properly again. Elena looked herself up and down, she may be whole, but she was soaked in blood and hardly any of it was her own.

She looked over to Damon, sat quietly away from them all. Jer caught her gaze and nodded as if able to read her thoughts. "Go to him." He said simply.

* * *

><p>Damon sat on his stoop watching the swelling on his hands finally disappear. He flexed his fingers and felt the rawness in his wrist. He felt empty. Truly empty. He was supposed to be dead.<p>

When he felt her hand on his shoulder he didn't respond. She felt puzzled. "Damon?" She said softly.

"Leave me alone, Elena."

She removed her hand as if she had been stung. She opened her mouth to speak, then she closed it again.

"Just go." He said.

"But I wanted to thank you."

"I did what anyone would have done."

"That's not true." She said, shocked that he would even think that.

The helicopter had now left, the coroner had loaded the last of the bodies and the police cars had all pulled away. Jeremy and Ric hovered in the distance watching them, but Caroline and Bonnie steered them both into their cars and in no time all the activity was over, leaving only blood stains and silence.

Damon stood up and walked past her. "Go back to your own home. You can't sleep here." He walked into the house and she knew she had just been dismissed. She felt her temperature rising. Why was he being like this? She got to her feet and ran after him.

"Can't, or _won__'__t_?" She found him stood in the bloody wreckage of his house. He faced away from her. "Why don't you want me here?" She asked him. He remained silent. She put out her hand and turned him around. "Damon, why don't you want me here?" She repeated.

"Because I can't _do_ this any more!" Damon cried out. "You make me feel dead inside."

She raised her fist to her mouth in utter shock. He slowly turned away again, but she captured his hand and wouldn't let it go. When he refused to turn around again, she moved through the broken wood and glass and faced him. She put her hands on his bloody face, a mirror to where they had been this afternoon when Stefan had called. "I make you feel 'dead' inside?" She asked him, incredulous.

He looked at her, his blue eyes the shade of a storm now past.

"No!" She said refusing to have that. She stretched up on her tiptoes and kissed his lips gently. He didn't react. He looked into the middle distance over her shoulder. She didn't let his face go. She reached up and kissed him again, this time her lips gently parting. As she pulled away the delicate skin of her lips stuck to his, and softly pulled away. His eyes flicked to hers. As soon as he met her eyes, his barriers fell away. He could take her concern, her sadness, her worry - but not her pity.

He turned and walked away.

"Damon!" She shouted as he walked slowly up the damaged staircase, stepping over the broken banisters. "_Damon!_" He suddenly sped with vampire speed to his room and attempted to shut the busted door.

* * *

><p>Elena walked up the stairs and sat down outside his door, which was slightly ajar. She could see he was sitting on the end of the bed. His room was relatively unscathed. He seemed numb.<p>

She sat down with her back against the wall and talked through the gap in the door.

"'I won't leave you.' That's what you said to me. Well Damon, I don't care if you want me here or not, because I won't leave you. I won't. So don't ask me to."

She didn't expect a reply. The minutes ticked by. She felt bone tired, she rolled her head back against the wall and looked at the ceiling. The night had come quickly and she sat in the darkness with him sat on the other side of the door also in the gloom. She took a peak through it now and saw the moonlight casting a ghostly light in his room.

She drew up her knees and rested her head on them. That's when she heard it. He was wrecking his room. The cry he made sounded like his soul was being ripped apart. She got to her feet, opened the door and stood there with a horrified look on her face as he flung everything everywhere. He smashed it all. He tore his feather pillows in half. When he began to try and tear his mattress apart that he had already tossed at the wall, she ran into the room, and grabbed him, flinging her arms around him to stop him. She held him still like that as white feathers settled around them like dust in the moonlight.

Eventually he turned and went to push her away, but she looked up at him and gripped his shoulders. "I won't leave you." She repeated again. "I won't leave. So don't ask me to." He said nothing, his body seemed to slump in her hands. The mattress slid to floor with a thump and a poof of feathers rose up into the air. She took his hand and lead him, calmer now, to the bathroom through the wreckage of his smashed up room.

She let his hand go and leaned over the bath. She switched on the faucets and let the water run. She filled the bath and poured a generous amount of foaming bath salts in. The hot steam rose into the air with delicate swirls. She ran her hand through the water and evenly distributed the bubbles. She turned the faucets off and turned to him. She began, hands shaking, to undo what was left of his ripped and bloody shirt. He didn't move as she carefully slid the fabric over his shoulders. When she saw his naked chest she winced. It was covered in red welds. She let her fingers lightly touch his ribs. "So much pain..." She whispered so low only a vampire would have been able to discern the words.

She undid his belt and unzipped his fly. She tried to feel as dispassionate as a nurse with her patient, or a mother with a child, but this was Damon - and although he had made damn sure she caught him as naked as many times as was possible, she still felt her hands shake as she pushed the pants from his hips. When they hit the floor he didn't even step out of them. She bent down and lifted up his legs one at a time, her hand on his calf, and removed the pants. She picked up them up and carefully folded them, lying them over a wrecked chair in the bathroom. She was delaying what she knew had to be done. She hoped it was too dark for him to see the heat in her cheeks. She tried to switch her emotion off, but being here in the dark with him so close, damaged and vulnerable, it was impossible.

She pulled his briefs down quickly without really looking at him and again he didn't move when she touched him. She repeated the process of helping him step out of them as she had his pants. Blushing heavily as she bent down, her eyes stayed firmly averted. She raised herself up carefully lifted his arm and putting a hand on his back, and made him take a step towards the tub.

"Climb in." She said, guiding him to the edge. He got in and slowly sat down. He didn't move. She reached for the natural sponge and sat down beside the tub on her knees. She dipped the sponge in the water and let it soak up the bubbles and warm water then very gently ran it across his chest.

"Shhh..." She soothed, as she washed away the blood. "Shhh...there now." She said, her voice wavering.

Slowly and gently she dipped the sponge into the hot slick water and moved it across him, watching as the rivulets of water run down his chest, arms and back. She picked up his hands and ran the sponge down to his fingertips. Gently and slowly she bathed every part of him above the water's surface. She was especially careful when cleaning the blood from his face. She ran the sponge through his hair, and almost cried when she saw how much blood ran down his face. The water she was now a pale pink color from his own blood. She blinked away the tears she was silently crying and continued her work. Her hand dipped below the surface and she let the sponge run over his outstretched leg, knee, shin and down to his foot. She stood up in order to reach his other leg and repeat the process, but as she reached over him, she looked at his face and saw how lost he was. She pulled her hand back out of the water, and stopped what she was doing. She put the sponge down on the side of the tub, then pulled her own top over her head.

She felt her hair fall over her naked shoulders. She slipped open the fly of her jeans and pushed them off. Before she lost her nerve she undid her bra with shaking hands and placed it on the floor. She lowered her panties. She slowly straightened her back and looked at the man in the tub, who's eyes did not move from the spot in front of him where they had been fixed for the past few minutes. She moved over to the tub and carefully stepped in it, it was only then that he looked up, when he could feel her ankles between his legs. He moved so that his knees were bent to make room for her and she lowered herself into the rose pink water. She sat there, her breasts peaking above the surface of the water, she pushed her shoulders back and looked at him. Finally he met her eyes. It was as though he had only just noticed she was in the room with him.

The moonlight reflected off the bubbles and the surface of the water, giving each an ethereal quality.

She reached for the sponge and offered it to him. He took it, but looked at her with hesitation. She offered him a tiny smile, then that faded away with her returning shyness. He moved and the water surged as he suddenly shifted onto his knees. With his left hand he suddenly swept up her hair so that it exposed her neck. With his right hand, he dipped the sponge in the water and ran it across her back.

Her eyes flicked up to his chest as he leaned across her. He was so close, she could feel her heart beat wildly. He sat back down and ran the sponge gently from shoulder to shoulder, watching as the the bubbles slid down her heaving chest. He flicked his eyes up to her. She reached out to touch his face.

"Why do I make you feel dead inside?" She asked him, pained.

"Because you don't love me." He replied.

But she did.

As the words left his mouth, she found herself rising up out of the water and moving into his arms. He leaned back and had one hand on her back and the other gripping her behind. His lips slid against hers as the water moved over their bodies and mingled their blood. He lifted her up in his arms and climbed out of the bath, her half wet hair stuck to both of them. She held on tight around his neck. His skin was slippery, but warm. He put her onto her feet, and before she knew it she was being wrapped in a huge fluffy white towel. He began to rub her dry. She stopped him by reaching up and taking the towel from him and opening it. It was the first time her he had really looked at her. She let the towel drop to the floor and enjoyed his eyes traveling over her glistening skin. She admired his body too, now fully restored and gleaming in the moonlight, his erection standing proud. He stepped towards her and took her into his arms and then they were kissing. Kissing as though nothing else mattered.

* * *

><p>She made love to him on the broken mattress lying on the floor with its innards spilling out. Feathers drifted over their bodies as they touched each other.<p>

"Never let me go." She breathed into his ear as he moved inside her. He turned her over and she rode him, his hands ran over the her ass, pulling her down onto him as she moaned. Her speed increased. Her hands rested on his abdomen, as she rose and fell with his movements.

"Oh God!" She panted with desire.

She threw her head back and feathers settled in her dark hair like snow. She sighed from her heart as she came. Her body curving into a sensual S shape as she contracted against him, making him spill into her with his own cry.

She immediately fell down onto her side and he looked at her, his eyes glinting like diamonds as he pulled a feather from her hair. She took his hand in hers as he held the feather, and brushed her cheek across it like a cat. He smiled. She let his hand go and he blew the feather into the air.

* * *

><p>Later that week when Damon finally got around to checking his email, he found one in his inbox from Elena. He clicked on it with curiosity.<p>

_If I die today, I want you to know that I love you too. I always will._


	3. A Moment in Time

**A Moment in Time**

Bonnie, Jer and Elena were chatting with Ric, who was waiting for Damon to appear so they could go for a drink together and forget about Klaus for a while. Damon bounded down the stairs and grabbed his jacket off the back off Elena's chair.

"You look animated Witchy, what's happening?" Damon commented to Bonnie, who was leaning in telling Ric something that had clearly gotten the whole group's attention.

"I was just telling Ric that I've been practicing hypnosis. I learned that it's a useful tool for witches because it teaches skills such as focus and concentration."

"And let's not forget manipulation. I wouldn't trust you as a hypnotist for a second." Damon said.

"Oh Damon, grow up." Elena replied. "I think what Bonnie is talking about is a really good idea."

"As if she could hypnotize anyone anyway!" He snorted with derision.

"Fine, Damon," Bonnie replied stiffly, "you're entitled to your opinion. Not everyone here is as closed minded as you are."

"Fine, prove it. I bet you a thousand dollars that you can't hypnotize one single person here, even if you had all night to do it."

"Hey, Damon, c'mon. Leave her alone." Jer said.

Ric started to stand in order to remove Damon from the room, but Bonnie put her palm out flat towards him.

"No, Ric. I can do this. Why don't you both sit down?" She requested. Ric looked to Damon, who was smirking. The vampire stood behind Elena's chair with his arms folded across his chest. His face harbored his familiar, cynical, lopsided smile.

"Oh Ric, we _have_ to stay to see this," Damon smirked, "I do so love a spectacular failure."

"Damon, I've told you once already. Cut it out." Jer said seriously, turning to Damon with irritation. Damon put his hands out in mock-apology. Bonnie blushed a little when Jer caught her eye. She didn't know how she felt about him defending her.

"Okay, Damon sit down please." She asked.

"I'd rather stand."

"Damon!" Elena said with irritation.

Bonnie shrugged. "It doesn't matter. Just ignore him, he can do what he wants. Okay, now everybody, just close your eyes."

* * *

><p>For five minutes Bonnie spoke, taking the people in the room into a deep meditative state and controlling their breathing.<p>

She told them she would start with an exercise to see which of them was susceptible to hypnosis. They were to clasp their hands when she said to, but if they could, they were to open them again. If when they opened their eyes their hands were _not_ clasped, then they were not susceptible, and could not be fully hypnotized.

After about five minutes, Bonnie brought the group out of their light trance. As they came around, they all began excitedly to look at each other to see who still had their hands clasped. The room filled with disappointment as they realized that none of them had their hands still linked.

"Ha, Witchy! You owe me a thousand bucks!" Crowed Damon.

"Er, Damon... You might not want to speak too soon." Ric said with a mixture of concern, intrigue and amusement. Everyone turned to face the vampire.

"What?" Damon asked, realizing that everyone was now staring at him.

He looked down and spotted that his own hands were firmly clasped. When he tried to separate them, he found it hard to do. "Get your coat, Ric. We're leaving." He said aggressively as he forced his hands apart.

Ric began to smile. "No way. Not now."

"Well, well..." Bonnie said smirking.

Damon pointed a finger at her. "No!"

"I never said anything!" She protested.

"But I know what you are about to say."

"Oh what are you scared of, you big girl?" Elena teased him, turning in her seat. "That she'll make you dance around like a chicken?" Then her eyes lit up as she looked at Bonnie. "Ooh, can you make him do that?"

Bonnie laughed. "No thanks, I value my life."

"No, Bonnie! I said no. We are leaving, Ric. Come on." Damon said and began to walk away.

"Not a chance." Ric said firmly crossing his arms and settling back in his chair. "I thought you said you didn't believe she could do it, so surely there is nothing to be afraid of, is there?"

Everyone joined in with cries of 'come on', 'be a sport' and giving Damon general grief. His jaw grew firm. "I said no." He said angrily.

"Damon, I promise I won't let Bonnie do anything to embarrass you." Ric added. "If this exercise helps her with her magic, then try not to see it as being about you, but see it as helping to protect all of us. Won't you do it for that?"

Everyone grew quiet and swiveled their eyes back to Damon again. He felt pressured. He breathed heavily and thought about it for a while.

When he nodded, everyone cheered.

* * *

><p>As soon as Damon went under, Elena's cell rang. She looked guilty, grabbed it and walked out of the room, whispering "Hi Care, can I call you back?".<p>

The rest of the group kept their attention fixed on Bonnie and Damon. Damon sat in the seat opposite her and looked comfortable. His hands rested on his knees and he breathed deeply. Bonnie asked him to take himself to a time when he felt most relaxed.

"Where are you Damon?"

"I'm at home." He said.

Everyone looked at each other with disappointment. Maybe he wasn't truly under?

"Who is there with you?" Bonnie continued.

"My father was here, but he has left. I am in charge of the house this afternoon."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "What year is it, Damon?"

"Eighteen sixty-two, of course."

"Of course, how silly of me." Bonnie said exchanging glances with Jer, who smiled.

"How old are you, Damon?"

"Today is the occasion of my twenty-fifth birthday."

The group in the room exchanged glances, Bonnie smiled widely. She could feel the excitement in the air. Everyone was hanging off their every word.

"Happy birthday." She said to him.

"Thank you, Miss... I don't believe I caught your name?" Damon replied, crossing his leg one over the other.

"Bonnie Bennett. You can call me Bonnie. And these are my friends, Mr Alaric Saltzman and Mr Jeremy Gilbert." Damon nodded to each of the men in turn. "Do you have plans for today, Mr Salvatore?" Bonnie continued.

"A dance of course. Little happens in Mystic without marking the occasion with a dance." He smiled weakly.

"Will your brother be there?"

Damon sighed, "I expect so. Stefan has half the women in the state hoping he will mark their cards. He is, I believe, the town's only 'eligible bachelor'." He raised his eyebrows in his familiar way and then dropped the expression to show exactly what he thought about that.

Bonnie stifled a giggle. "And what about you, Damon? Are you not also an eligible bachelor? Isn't there someone you are looking forward to dancing with tonight?"

"My father made it especially clear what he thought my chances were of finding someone to dance with this evening. Apparently one cannot expect any lady of quality to even look at you once you have broken an engagement. It seems I was highly naive in expecting love to actually be a feature of my marriage, and in breaking my engagement to a 'perfectly acceptable young lady', I have acted 'willfully and irresponsibly for a family of our status'." He mocked his father's tone and smiled, but everyone could see the true pain behind his eyes.

Jer looked at Damon thoughtfully, this was a side of the vampire that he didn't allow them to see. Ric too rested his chin on his fingertips and considered what Damon had said. This was all news to him. Damon was a friend, but even so he was cautious with the information he shared. Ric was as fascinated by this as everyone else was, but he also felt protective of Damon. If Bonnie probed too much, he would move her on.

"I'm sorry to hear that, Damon." Bonnie said interrupting all of their thoughts. "What was your fiancé's name?" Everyone was dying to hear the answer, but they didn't get to, because at that moment, Elena walked in.

She tried to sneak back into the room quietly so as not to disturb what was going on, but as soon as she entered Damon stood bolt upright, making her wonder what the hell was going on. She looked behind her to see if he was reacting to something beyond her shoulder. When she realized his reaction was to do with her, she cast her eyes to the assembled group for help.

"A lady has entered the room." Ric hissed under his breath to Jeremy, as a reminder of what era Damon believed they were in. He signaled for the boy to stand with him.

Despite his amusement at standing when his sister entered the room, Jer got to his feet. Elena smiled slightly, but her embarrassment and incomprehension were colliding. She tried to silently communicate with Bonnie that she didn't know what the hell was going on.

"Will you not introduce me to this young lady, Miss Bonnie?" Damon said eagerly. There was a light and vivacity in his eyes that had not been there before Elena walked in.

"Er, yes of course. Mr Damon Salvatore, meet Miss Elena Gilbert. Miss Gilbert, it is Mr Salvatore's birthday today," Bonnie added slowly for Elena's benefit, "his _twenty-fifth_ birthday to be precise." She said raising her eyebrows so only her friend could see. Elena looked shocked, but quickly hid her surprise by smiling at Damon.

The men in the room shifted their feet wondering when they could sit back down. Damon walked over to Elena, took her hand in his and raised it to his lips. He pressed his lips gently against her skin as softly as a whisper.

It was obvious to all assembled that he was totally and utterly smitten. He looked like he had been struck by lightning. The entire group exchanged glances, and Elena blushed to her roots.

"It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Miss Gilbert." Damon said quietly.

"Er, thank you. And yours." She looked at Ric for help, he smiled as if to say, 'you're doing okay kid'. Ric then nodded to Jer and they both sat down.

"Are you new to this part of Virginia, Miss Gilbert? I am shocked that I have not already heard news of your arrival. Little happens in this town without word traveling ahead of it, particularly when it comes to neighbors joining us. Especially when those neighbors are quite so..." he searched for a word, and settled on, "bewitching."

Elena looked at her feet, her cheeks burning still, "I guess I am." She managed to say.

"Then I hope you would do me the very great honor of allowing me to offer my services as your guide? Mystic Falls is small, but it is not without its charms."

"I imagine."

"Of course there are the Falls it is named for, then there is a very interesting church, which is a lovely example of early Settler architecture."

Jeremy sniggered. Bonnie glared at him. Jer looked down and tried to recover his composure.

"That would be lovely." Elena said.

"Then I have your permission to ask your father if I may escort you on such a venture?"

"Unfortunately my father died, some time ago."

Damon suddenly became quite sincere. He took her hand again and pressed it in both his own.

"I know how it is to lose a beloved parent. My own mother passed in childbirth some years ago. It aggrieves me still. But I worry most for my younger brother, who I fear must mature into a man without the direction of a loving mother." He paused and looked down at her hand clasped in his. "But I have found the teachings of the Church a most true and steady comfort, as I have no doubt you have also found."

"Um, indeed."

She pulled her hand gently away from his and he let go with reluctance.

"Well," he said changing his tone until it became almost breezy, "let us talk of happier things! I do so hope you will be my guest at the dance this evening? If you refuse, I feel my birthday will be quite a ruinous occasion."

At that, Bonnie melted a little. Elena couldn't look at Damon, her cheeks burned red. Ric raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. They were all too spellbound to interrupt the little scene in front of them. And as far as Damon was concerned, the minute Elena walked into the room, nobody else existed.

"I must at once seek the permission of your guardian. Pray who is the man of the house now your father has passed?"

"My brother, Jeremy." Jer stood again and shook Damon's offered hand. Damon straightened his back a little and became quite serious.

"Ah! I believe we have already met. Sir," he said addressing Jer, "I believe it falls to me to welcome you and your charming sister to Mystic Falls. You will find us a small community, but a happy one. I hope you will allow me to offer my services, and those of my own brother, to make you feel at home."

"Erm, thanks, I guess."

"I also humbly seek your permission to capitalize your sister's company once again this evening. I would so like it if you would both attend my dance."

"Yeah, sure. Okay." Jer muttered.

Damon smiled broadly. He turned to Elena and lifted her hand once again and kissed it. "Well, Miss Gilbert, as onerous as I find it, I will allow your good self, your brother and your maid here to leave my home now - but only if you promise to hurry right back this evening. I would be bereft without the pleasure of your company." He gave Elena a mischievous smile. "I do so hope that you like to dance, because I aim to fill your dance card to the brim, Miss Gilbert, so that no other gentleman will be able to monopolize your attention for even a single waltz!"

"Yes, I like to dance." She said truthfully, a smile finally breaking through her embarrassment.

"Then it is settled. I should so like to do whatever makes you happy." He said gently, his gaze seeking hers with such sincerity that it made Elena shy to see it.

Ric leaned towards Bonnie and whispered in her ear. "Perhaps now is a good time to put a stop to this."

"Y'think?" She said sarcastically, still smarting from being called Elena's maid.

She stood up and positioned herself firmly between Damon and Elena.

"Damon, I need you to concentrate on the sound of my voice. I want you to listen only to me."

Damon was doing no such thing. He was still smiling at Elena. He wasn't concentrating on anything but the girl who blushed prettily behind Bonnie's shoulder.

"Elena, perhaps you should leave the room for a bit." Jer suggested gently.

His sister nodded and left the room, but not before casting a final glance over her shoulder to the vampire behind her. He truly looked like a young man in love. As he caught her gaze, he bowed his head politely, keeping his hands linked behind his back.

When he looked up, she was gone. Finally Bonnie had his attention.

Slowly she began to guide him out of his trance.

* * *

><p>"What did you do to me?" Damon asked suspiciously as soon as he came round. His eyes burned into Bonnie's with distrust.<p>

"You did some great Tina Turner songs." Ric said quickly before anyone could speak. Damon looked confused. Ric grabbed the vampire's arm and lead him towards the door.

"What happened?" Damon asked him, realizing he was being rushed away from something.

"Nothing, come on. I need a drink."

"But I need to get my wallet." Damon said trying to turn back around.

"You can owe me." Ric said, as he dragged him out the door.

* * *

><p>In the Grill, Damon nursed a drink and sulked. Ric sat on the stool next to him and tried various ways to bring him out of his funk, but nothing worked.<p>

"What really happened today?" Damon finally asked him.

Ric sighed. "Not buying my Tina Turner story, huh?"

Damon shook his head.

"Didn't think so." Ric took a deep breath. The vampire beside him fixed his blue eyes on him. "Bonnie took you under and you went back to a time when you felt truly comfortable. You said it was eighteen sixty-two and that it was your twenty-fifth birthday."

Damon nodded. "What did she make me do?"

"Nothing, Damon."

"Did she make a fool out of me?" Damon seemed determined to get angry, but Ric shook his head. He had to diffuse the vampire's fast rising temper.

"No. I wouldn't have let that happen. No-one was laughing at you. In fact..." he looked away from Damon's piercing gaze and down at his own drink, "you were kinda... charming."

Both men looked embarrassed.

"What did I say?" Damon insisted.

"Well you told us that you were preparing for your dance that evening." Ric noticed Damon scowling, the vampire's lack of patience meant his anger was already surfacing again. "And then Elena walked into the room. You thought you hadn't met her before, so you asked to be introduced. That's all."

"So why do I get the feeling you're holding out on me?"

Ric swirled the ice in his glass. "Because I am, Damon. Do you really want to hear this? Because there are some things we are better off not knowing."

Damon frowned. "I want it all."

"Fine." Ric sighed. "It wasn't so much what you said, or did, it was more how you _were_." He paused. "It was obvious that you really liked Elena. I mean immediately. You kinda flirted with her."

Damon shrugged, seemingly unimpressed. "I flirt with everyone."

Ric shook his head. "Not like this. It was like we could see into your heart. Like everything you felt about her was kind of exposed. Out there."

Damon took a gulp of his drink, then signaled to the bartender for two more. "Did she notice?" He asked eventually.

"Damon, _everybody_ noticed." Ric said with apologetic eyes. Damon nodded. The set to his jaw was firm. Ric let it sink in, then he put his hand on his friend's shoulder and squeezed.

"Look, I didn't realize you felt so strongly. I'm sorry if I doubted you."

He removed his hand and they sat in silence for a while, the mood in the room suddenly cool. Damon played with his glass.

"You love her, don't you?" Ric asked, his eyes examining the vampire's body language.

"The question is not how _I_ feel..." Damon snapped back. "The question is how she feels about my damn brother. And we both know the answer to that."

"_Do you? Perhaps you should just ask me."_

Damon and Ric spun around to see the person who had spoken. They had been so busy brooding that they had not heard Elena enter the bar. She looked at Damon, a sad smile on her face.

Ric got up and put his coat on. "I think I'll just, er..." He nodded once at Damon, then rapidly made his exit.

Elena moved close to the vampire, who eyed her uneasily. "How long have you been stood there?" He asked.

"It doesn't matter. But we do need to talk."

"There's nothing to talk about." He said sullenly, turning back to his drink. She reached out, and placed her hand on his, feeling his fingers softly with her own. He pulled his hand away.

"Don't." He said.

"Don't what? Don't touch you? Don't be close to you? Don't admit that I have feelings for you too?" Her voice wavered. "You once said I would have liked you if I met you in eighteen sixty four, but you were wrong. If I met you then, then Katherine would have had your heart. Today I met you before you had even heard of her and... and well it was clear that you wanted to be with me." She looked at her feet. "Almost as much as I want to be with you now." She finished shyly.

He moved suddenly until he was standing in front of her with both his hands on her face, looking at her intensely.

"Don't say this if you don't mean it." He said.

"Do you think I'd come into this bar, in front of all the people I know just to tell you to switch off your feelings for me? Do you think I want to tell Stefan that it is over, when I know he will always love me?" Her eyes searched his desperately. "But Stefan's not the one who makes me feel this way. You do." She breathed deeply, her chest rising and falling, "Damon, I've been scared. Scared for so long to admit my feelings. But being scared is no way to live."

She placed her hand over his on her own face and brushed her cheek against his palm. She ignored the looks she was getting from a group of girls in her year who were sat at the table opposite gawping at her every move. "Damon, it's you I want." She finished.

"Elena, be sure." The fear in his voice was evident. He ran his thumbs over the delicate skin on her cheeks.

"I never wanted to be the kind of person who caused that," she said nodding towards the girls who were openly gossiping about them both, "but for you, I will face anything. I don't care what other people say. I just want to be with you." Damon seemed frozen with indecision, his hands moved into her soft hair. "And if you don't kiss me now, I think I may just die." She added almost laughing, her knees feeling like they were no longer able to support her weight.

"If I do kiss you now, there is no going back." He said seriously. "I won't. I can't."

At that, Elena reached up and put her arms around his shoulders and pushed her lips against his. He responded enthusiastically, dominating the kiss, crushing her against his body and pulling her greedily into his arms.

She could practically feel the open-mouthed stares, but she didn't care. She was with Damon and he wanted, loved and needed her like she had never experienced before.

This moment in time was truly theirs.


	4. Tomboy

**Tomboy**

I took shelter from a shower

And I stepped into your arms

On a rainy night in Soho

The wind was whistling all its charms

I sang you all my sorrows

You told me all your joys

Whatever happened to that old song

To all those little girls and boys

oOo

Now the song is nearly over

We may never find out what it means

Still there's a light I hold before me

You're the measure of my dreams

The measure of my dreams

oOo

_A __Rainy __Night __in __Soho_, The Pogues

* * *

><p>"Come on, faster."<p>

"I'm going as fast as I can, Damon!"

"This isn't a game, Elena! Klaus hits you, you're dead. He hits me, I get to live another day."

Elena burst into tears and ran out of the room.

Damon cursed, he took a breath and went after her.

* * *

><p>He found her in the bedroom she had taken as her own. She was curled up in the window seat, her head resting on her knees, her face turned away. She pulled her arms tightly around her legs and sat quietly. Whatever tears she had cried had come and gone.<p>

He didn't bother knocking. What would be the point? She would ignore him anyway and he didn't want to be ignored. He walked in.

Moving close to her and trapping her in the confined space of her window, he felt the same rush he always did when they were together in such close proximity. Hesitantly he placed his hand lightly on the small of her back. It completely took him by surprise when that gentle gesture seemed inspired her to spin around immediately, drop her feet to the floor and fling her arms around him.

After a moment's hesitation, he wrapped his arms around her and held her close, stroking her hair. He reached down and kissed the top of her head. She smelled like roses, she always did.

"If I'm hard on you," he said, "it's just because I'm worried about you being strong enough. Sometimes I forget to tell you that."

She nodded into his waist and sniffed. He pulled back and she looked up at him, brushing the marks of her tears away.

"Damon, can I tell you something? Klaus scares me." She confided.

He nodded his response. She wasn't the only one. God only knew what Stefan was doing right now, but he hadn't returned home. Klaus was bound to be as mad as hell. Their attempt to kill him would not have improved his mood. Elena was more at risk from him than ever before.

"I think we should get out of here for a while." He suggested.

"The house?"

"America."

Elena became silent. After a moment, she took a deep breath, then nodded.

"Okay. Where?"

* * *

><p>They scampered into the shelter of Soho doorway, barely large enough to cover the both of them. She smiled at Damon as he shook his hair free of the slick of rainwater. He was dripping wet.<p>

"Don't you dare say it." He said, his eyes narrowing.

"Say what?" She replied, a sparkle in her eyes. "Oh do you mean about the fact that this is a torrential downpour and you said _not_ to buy that umbrella? Oh no, don't you worry, I won't bring that up."

She grinned. He scowled at her. "They were tacky. I am not buying a Union Jack umbrella."

"Ric told me that it is only called the 'Union Jack' when the flag is being flown on a ship at sea. Otherwise it is just called the 'Union' flag. It's a commonplace misconception. One that most Brits themselves share." She said with a teasing know-it-all expression.

"Oh it is, is it?"

She nodded primly.

"Anything else you wish to correct me on?"

"Well, I did say that we should walk between Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road, but you insisted on taking the Tube and we got stuck in a tunnel. I _told_ you it would be quicker to walk."

"Quite finished?"

She shook her head no.

"_And_ I said we should get a hotel closer to central London because it would take ages to get back there, but you wouldn't have it."

"Done?"

"Erm..." She looked up into the air as if she was thinking about it. "Yep. Reckon so."

"Right, Miss-Know-it-All, I suppose you also have a grand plan for what you want to do now? I assume we are done with the tourist attractions for the day."

"Not sure about now, but tomorrow I definitely want to do Westminster. The House of Commons, Number Ten Downing Street and Westminster Abbey. Ric also said I had to check out Churchill's War Rooms."

He gave her a look. "You know I lived through the war, don't you? It was all _very_ gloomy. I don't think you want to do that."

She laughed. "If you had your way, we would spend the entire time in pubs!"

"Not true. There are some bars I like too." He gave her a mischievous grin. She rolled her eyes.

"I want to try and do _some_ cultural things whilst I'm here. You know, museums, art galleries. You have heard of those things haven't you?"

"Funny girl."

"I try."

At that moment, a single droplet of water slid off her collar and right down her back. She involuntarily shivered.

"You're cold." He stated simply. "We need to get you out of this rain." His eyes scanned the street they were sheltering in, looking for somewhere to go - but it was a street of nightclubs and nothing was open yet.

She shook her head. "I'm fine. Let's just wait it out. It'll pass I'm sure."

He draped his arm around her shoulders and rubbed her right arm vigorously, but she pushed him away.

"You're soaked! You're just making it worse."_ If you hold me,_ she thought, _I can't trust myself._

"Suit yourself." He shrugged and leaned back against the door, looking at her with cool blue eyes. Even wet she looked gorgeous. He'd like to get into a tub with her and lose the soap...

"What?" She reddened after moments under his gaze. She actually felt herself blushing, which made it worse.

"Nothing." He turned his head to look back out on the grey and rainy streets.

Puddles pooled in the centre of the road, they were slick with oil. There was a steady stream of people passing them by, either battling with their umbrellas to keep dry, or strolling down the centre of the street like they didn't give a damn.

The street was also clearly a shortcut for black cabs. The glow of their amber lights reflected in the puddles as they splashed past. Damon considered hailing one.

"Let's go back to the hotel," he suggested, "clean up. Have a leisurely dinner... A bottle of wine or two."

"Sounds good." Except for the drinking bit, she never trusted herself to mix Damon with alcohol.

"I'll hail a cab."

"No, don't do that. Let's get a bus! We passed a stop just a little bit back."

"I don't do buses." _But I will if you ask me to._

"I want to ride in at least one London bus whilst I'm here. A red double decker."

He sighed and rolled his eyes with exasperation. "You know it will take hours, don't you?"

"Yep. We can dry out en-route."

"Or we can sit in damp clothes for hours. Depends on which way you look at it."

She pointed to herself, "Glass half full." She pointed to him. "Glass half empty."

She took off back into the rain, almost bounding. A wide grin on her face. "I'm going to buy you one of those _Union_ flag umbrellas too. You just see if I don't."

He shook his head with a sigh, flicked up the collar on his coat, pushed his hands deep into his pockets and ducked out of the doorway after her.

* * *

><p>She wanted to sit on the top deck 'for the views', but the bus windows were completely steamed up.<p>

He persuaded her to take the very back seats, so they wouldn't be bothered by passengers getting on and off, but what he really wanted was to sit with her away from the world in a space with just the two of them.

She took the window seat and ran her hand over the glass repeatedly, trying to clear a hole in the condensation covered glass.

"Nice view?" He smirked.

"You know I can't see a thing." She elbowed him in the ribs.

"Well I shall just have to engage you in scintillating conversation then for the next, oh, five or six hours."

"Hey - who picked the hotel?" She reminded him, casting playful eyes over to him. He couldn't help but smile.

"You're very annoying you're right." He returned her nudge with one of his own. "Are you not worn out from all that smugness?"

"Is this what you think passes for 'scintillating conversation? Boy oh boy."

"You know what, you are an appallingly ungrateful wretch, Elena Gilbert. Many, _many_, women would kill to be in your place right now."

"Really? Well why don't you give all those poor, desperate, women a call and tell them where your hotel is and see if they come running? What's more_,_you made me pay for my bus fare _and_ yours, after letting me get soaked through. Frankly, you're the worse date I've ever had."

"Oh I am, am I?"

She nodded, giving him her best poker face. He was about to reply when the bus hit a bump, and he nudged accidentally against her. With his thigh now touching hers, he could feel her pulse. The gentle throb of blood passing through her veins was at once calming and arousing, which seemed an odd but wonderful disparity.

"I guess I'll have to do something about my dating skills then." He said.

"I guess you will. But I'm warning you. You've got a _lot_ of ground to make up."

As the bus continued its stop-start route, Damon began to deliberately bump into her; squeezing her further and further against the wall. She tried to hide her smile, but it kept peeking through. Eventually when she was squashed into the smallest possible space with every part of his body squeezed against hers, she gave him a look as if to say 'I'm on to you.' He was about to give her a look of innocence and then implied horror that she would feel that way about him when he was 'doing nothing', when the bus hit a genuine bump. Damon had to grab her to stop her falling into his lap.

As Elena righted herself, she knew she should let him go, but she kept her hands in his. He looked into her warm, brown eyes and softly ran his thumbs over the back of her hands, cherishing the soft skin beneath his fingertips. She knew she should pull away, but she didn't. She looked at him.

He could feel her breathing shallow and her heartbeat grow stronger. She let her fingers close around his and he kept stroking her. His looked from her eyes, to her lips and he found himself being drawn ever closer. He wanted so much to feel those full, soft lips on his. He was only millimeters away, he could feel her sweet breath on his face. She looked at him with a mixture of fear and desire.

"I don't want to interrupt you young people, it's just I have to sit here because of my leg. Old war injury. See?"

As the old man interrupted them, Damon saw Elena flinch as if she had come to her senses. She pulled her hands immediately out of his and looked out of the window. He thought he saw the glistening of a tear. He himself moved away from her so that he was back in his own seat and giving her space. He knew she was upset.

He turned to the pensioner who had settled on the seat in front of them and who was knocking his metal leg to prove his point.

"Hollow. See?"

Damon gave him a similarly hollow smile. "I believe you can sit where you like, sir." He said. "It's a free country."

The old man took his hat off and scratched his head before putting it back on. "American?" Damon nodded. "From the South right?" Damon smiled again. "Georgia? No no! Wait... Virginia."

"You have an ear for dialects."

"My dear wife was from Louisiana, she came over in the war to help with cultural liaison between your people and ours." The old man ran his hand over his gnarled arthritic fingers and chuckled at that. "Let's just say she showed me culture, and I liaised." He chuckled, Damon was quite certain he had used that joke many times. "What's your name, son?"

"Damon Salvatore."

"And your lady friend?"

Damon glanced at Elena, who was desperately trying to compose herself. She just about managed a weak smile.

"Elena Gilbert." Damon said. She waved limply, then looked away again.

The man leaned forward conspiratorially towards Damon and whispered, "She's a pretty one, son. A 'keeper' as we say over here."

Damon gave him a weak smile in return. He felt the hollowness in his heart grow. It was true what he said, but she was not his to keep.

"You kids sightseeing?" Damon nodded. "Well, you be sure to visit Greenwich and the Cutty Sark. You tell them Bill Hayes sent you. Remember that."

"Bill Hayes. Got it."

"Old sailors never die." He said. "They just get hollow legs! Well, this is my stop, son. Takes me about ten minutes to get down the stairs, so I better start now." He chuckled again as he struggled to stand and Damon got up and helped him to his feet.

The old man nodded his thanks as Damon walked him up the aisle of the bus and delivered him to the top of the stairs. Bill turned to face him. He nodded towards Elena. "You gotta let them come to you, son. They won't be lead."

Damon looked at Elena, who was watching them both with interest. He gave her a smile, which she returned weakly. The spell between them seemed well and truly broken.

"Well, goodbye son. Good luck." The old man patted his hand on the banister, then made his way down the stairs.

Damon walked back down the length of the bus feeling gloomy. The bus suddenly lurched forward and he lost his footing entirely and stumbled unceremoniously into the back seat. Elena failed to suppress a laugh.

"Oh you like to laugh at my misfortune do you?" He said, delighted that something as simple as him making a fool of himself seemed to break the ice.

"It's just you're normally so composed. It's odd to think of you being anything other than, well, 'graceful' isn't exactly the right word, but you know what I mean."

"Hmm, I didn't use to be that way. It's the vampirism."

"You know it's odd, because I wondered about that. It's just that Caroline seems so much more elegant these days. She walks differently. But I can't imagine you being any different to the way you are now."

"Me? Nah! I used to be a total klutz."

She looked at him with surprise. "Really?" He nodded. "I find that hard to believe."

"Hey, I broke most bones in my body at least once before I turned."

"You did?"

He nodded. "I used to like riding, but I always pushed my horses too hard and too fast, and horses have a way of showing you when they don't want to do something." She giggled. "What about you?" He asked. "You ever broken anything?"

She shook her head. "No, but I did manage to break Jeremy's arm once, when he was little." She blushed. He opened his mouth in mock horror.

"You're a terrible sister! You should be ashamed."

"Hey, it wasn't all my fault. He was trying to break into my treehouse! There was a very clear sign on the door saying 'no boys allowed'."

"So you threw him from a treehouse? Elena Gilbert, I am shocked and disgusted."

"No! I just shut the trapdoor on him. He slipped and fell."

"When was that?"

"Last week."

He smiled at her joke.

"If it helps, he's never let me forget it. Every time he doesn't want to do something, he's all like," She dropped into a fake Jeremy voice, "Are you gonna break my arm again?.' It was like nineteen-ninety something - can we not just get over it already?"

Damon smiled. "You two are pretty close, huh?" He said, more a statement than a question. She nodded.

"I was devastated when I found out he wasn't really my brother. I was really mad at my parents for a while for lying to me. But I'm over that now. Jer and I have talked about it a little bit since. We're good."

He nodded. "You know, if you ever want to know anything about your real mom, Isobel..."

She shook her head. "No. She's your past Damon, not mine. She's not the woman who raised me."

He nodded. It was a tricky subject for them both, so he changed it.

"Look, I think we just passed the London Eye!"

"You're so making that up! Even _your_ eyesight isn't that good."

"If you can't actually see anything, then you may as well make it up." He countered.

"Oh my God, is that the Taj Mahal?" She said pointing to the totally greyed out window.

"Uh-huh, I think it may be. Oh my, is that the Eiffel Tower?"

"Definitely. I think I just saw a pyramid too."

"Wow, we really did get the right bus. This is some sightseeing trip."

She smiled at him and he felt a familiar warmth spread right through him, even though he was soaked to the skin.

"Your hair is drying curly." He said, brushing a curly lock away from her face.

"I'll attack it with straighteners as soon as I get back to the hotel. Damn you for getting me wet."

"I like your hair like that."

"You like my messy, matted, damp hair? I always knew you were insane."

"I'm not insane." _You always look beautiful to me._

He didn't need to say it, because she felt the unspoken words anyway and grew quiet. Complimenting her always seemed to result in her drifting further away from him. Maybe Bill was right, every time he hinted at how he felt, he pushed her further away.

"Actually, you're right. Now I come to look at you close up, I'm thinking, jeez this girl is _rough_." She dropped her jaw, and slapped at him. He shrugged.

"You are so rude!"

"What? You're the one who said you were a mess. I'm just agreeing with you."

"You are no gentleman."

"And you are definitely no lady."

"I can be a lady!"

"Oh yeah, I have never ever seen any evidence of that."

"What! You've seen me dressed up loads of times."

"Being dressed up does not make you a lady. You're a total tomboy."

"I am not!" She said with mock indignation.

"Yes you are. I think of you like an irritating little boy."

She laughed indignantly. "You are unbelievable! Fine. I'll show you. Tonight, you and me for dinner. Meet me in the foyer of the hotel at eight pm. You are going eat your words when you see how much of a lady I can be."

He rolled his eyes. "Pah, I'm not gonna hold my breath."

"You better not let me down, Salvatore, because when I walk into that foyer, I am gonna turn heads and all the real gentlemen in the room are gonna want to take me to dinner. And you know what, I may just let them."

"Whatever. You can talk the talk, but you can't walk the walk."

"Fine. You'll see."

* * *

><p>The rain never let up, and when they eventually did find the right stop, they had to dash the last two hundred yards to their hotel. The doorman looked at them with disdain as they dove into the foyer, soaking wet and laughing, flicking water at each other.<p>

"Right. Eight o'clock. Back here." She reminded him.

"I'll be here, Gilbert, waiting to see this mythical beast of a 'lady'."

"Hey, I'm way more a lady than you'll ever be a gentleman." She said turning on her heel. He grinned, but let the grin quickly drop away as she looked back over her shoulder and stuck her tongue out at him.

* * *

><p>He wore the only suit he had packed. At the time he had put it into his suitcase, he hadn't even been sure why he was taking it. But he had thrown it into his luggage anyway with 'you never know' spirit.<p>

He had spent twenty minutes of his afternoon swearing over the steam iron, trying to get the creases right in his shirt.

Now, he felt stupidly overdressed, as everyone else in the hotel foyer was wearing raincoats and waterproofs, and he looked like he was about to attend a wedding. He looked at his watch; it was twelve minutes past eight. He pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and began to draft a text message to Elena.

Suddenly he got the sensation that everyone in the foyer had their attention taken by something. His thumb hovered over the send button, but instead of pressing it, he cast his eyes upwards.

At first, he almost didn't recognize her. He nearly made the same mistake as everyone else and assumed that a movie star had walked into the room. He eyes went wide and he dropped his cell on the floor. She had turned him back into a klutz again.

She wore a black, sparkly satin dress, that was cut very low in the front and had a halter neck, but was entirely backless. She looked like she was covered in a million black diamonds. Just quite how she was staying in it was one of those beautiful miracles that men did not need to know, but just needed to appreciate. The dress was bias cut and skimmed perfectly over her hips, the hem resting just on her knees. She wore very high heels and carried a jet black clutch bag. She had styled her hair in big, chunky waves, somewhat as a response to Damon's comments earlier. She wore dark, smoky eye make-up, with natural lips and bright diamond earrings that caught the light as she walked.

Damon fumbled to pick up his phone as he stood up to greet her. She walked towards him with the air of someone confident that every eye was on her, (the dress was such that if she hadn't been, she never would have pulled it off). When she arrived in front of him, she leaned in to kiss his cheek.

For the first time in his life, he was speechless. Completely and utterly speechless.

"Still think I'm a tomboy then?" She said with a grin.

He shook his head.

"Maybe a little ladylike?" She teased. He grinned and held his hands up, finally finding his voice.

"I concede; total and utter defeat." She turned with him and he put his hand on the small of her back, relishing that every person was wondering who they were and why this quite ordinary hotel on the outskirts of town seemed to attract two such beautiful people.

* * *

><p>Their evening was filled with laughter as they regaled each other with increasingly more and more ridiculous stories from each other's past. Everyone in the room seemed to be drawn to them. Even the staff fussed around them all night, convinced they had to be celebrities.<p>

They talked so long that eventually they were the only people left in the restaurant. Eventually the manager had to come over and politely request that they relocate to the bar because they had to close.

At the bar they found a private snug and Damon carried what was left of their champagne over to their table. The flickering candlelight made Elena look even more breathtaking. He sat close by her side and resisted the temptation to place his hand on the small of her back again. All he wanted was to run his fingers over her cool skin once more, and feel every one of the baby, downy hairs at the base of her spine.

Her dress skimmed her body as she sat down, and he could see the gentle curve of her breasts and the undulations of her toned stomach.

He leaned close to her ear and whispered to her. "You could have tried a little harder to dress up tonight. I mean I went to all the trouble of ironing a shirt."

"I'm sorry to let you down." She said coyly, with a smile.

He spontaneously took her hand and kissed it. A gesture of friendship rather than anything more. He kept her hand in his and rested it on his knee. Even if he had wanted to, he couldn't let go.

"Where on earth did you find that dress?" He said almost breathlessly.

She smiled. "Actually I bought it the day after Jenna died. It was crazy expensive. I didn't even try it on, I just grabbed it and paid for it. I thought it would make me feel good. Of course it didn't." She shrugged. "I must admit I never thought I'd find an occasion to wear it. I didn't know why I brought it with me, but I did." She smiled.

"Well, I approve of your choice of totally inappropriate travel wear."

"You do, huh?"

He nodded enthusiastically.

She giggled, but she aslo found that tiredness was creeping up on her. She covered her mouth as a yawn escaped her lips.

"Oh, I'm sorry." She apologized.

"You seem ready for bed." He said, then blushed when he realized how that sounded.

She knew what was implied by what he said, and she tried to help dig him out.

"Sure. It's been a long day."

* * *

><p>As they exited the elevator and walked a long, silent corridor, Elena made use of the arm that Damon offered her. She briefly rested her head on his shoulder.<p>

He walked slowly. Far more slowly than was entirely necessary. Her heels became the excuse he needed to take his time, but really he just needed time to think.

His mind was racing. If this was any other girl there would be no question of where things would lead. But Elena wasn't 'any other girl'.

Elena was quiet too, as though she was also scared that they would eventually reach the doors of their neighboring rooms without having figured out first how to end their evening.

Eventually there was nowhere left to go. He walked past his door and stopped with her outside her own. She let go of his arm and he immediately missed the feel of her against his body.

She was breathing lightly. The silky fabric of her dress gently rose and fell. He broke the uncomfortable silence with forced gaiety.

"Well, Miss Tomboy, did I pass your test? Was my conversation scintillating enough?"

"The perfect gentleman." She said with a shy smile. There was a note of something like sadness in her words.

They looked at each other awkwardly.

"I guess I should catch up on my beauty sleep. I wouldn't want to turn up to Mr Churchill's War Rooms looking anything but fully rested." He said.

"Quite right." She agreed in a fake British voice. They fell into silence again. He leaned forwards to kiss her cheek, and she leaned too, his lips brushed her ear awkwardly.

She turned and unlocked her door. In her haste she dropped her key card and Damon stooped to pick it up. He looked at the card in his hand and hesitated just long enough for her to catch his eye. It was as though they both could read his thoughts. He handed it over to her and she smiled anxiously at him.

"Goodnight, Damon."

"Goodnight, Elena."

She gave him one last awkward smile, before slipping into her room and closing the door.

* * *

><p>Inside his room, Damon sat on the bed taking off his jacket and removing the cuff links of his shirt. He felt so anxious he actually began to wonder whether his heart had started beating again.<p>

He stood up and paced.

He should go to her.

No, he really shouldn't. It wasn't what she wanted.

But if it wasn't, then why did it hurt so much to end the night like this?

He was going to go to her.

No, he was going to sit down. Don't be rash, think this through... Because of Stefan.

Screw Stefan!

No, she loved Stefan. This wasn't fair on her.

But it was obvious she had feelings for him too.

Or was it?

God damn it!

He sat down with a thump and no sooner had he done so, then he got up again and strode to his door. He walked right out of it and stood in front of hers with his right fist raised, ready to knock.

* * *

><p>As soon as she shut the door, she leant her back against it from the inside. She rolled her head back and felt her chest rising and falling as she began to hyperventilate.<p>

Oh Jesus. What was she supposed to do? She stumbling forwards to the bed and fell onto her knees. She lay there with her arms stretched across the bed, her head resting on them. Her shoes slid from her feet. All she could feel was the pain in her heart.

Damon. Oh Damon.

Stefan.

She blinked back tears.

Her body felt like it was made of lead, but she dragged herself up and sat on the end of the bed. She put her elbows on her knees and her feet pointed inwards with pigeon toes.

Her heart wouldn't stop pounding.

This was torture. She was just a girl. She couldn't take much more of this.

She took a deep breath. She knew what she had to do.

She ran to her door in her bare feet and put her fingers around the handle.

* * *

><p>Damon rested his forehead quietly on her door, his fist opened and he lay his hand flat against the paintwork. He rolled his head back and forth. He shut his eyes and felt the pain inside screaming at him to act.<p>

* * *

><p>Elena stood with her left hand on the cold, grey handle of the door, her head was telling her 'don't go out there, don't give in', her heart told her everything but.<p>

She leaned her head against the door and closed her eyes. Slowly her hand moved from the handle onto the woodwork. She let her fingers rub against the painted grain. The door left a red indentation on her forehead.

She stayed there until her feeling of sickness passed.

She loved him, but she could not go to him. She would not be that person.

She turned towards her bed and undid the dress at her neck, letting it slip from her body.

She hauled herself under her sheets, her limbs a dead weight.

She closed her eyes and hoped her dreams would take her where she didn't dare go.

* * *

><p>He loved her but he would not go to her. He could not be that person.<p>

He turned and went to his room, his head held low.

Maybe one day the night would be theirs, but until then he would have to settle for his dreams.


	5. Velvet Ribbon

**This is written for Temptress Kitten in response to her wonderful prompt for the Holiday Author Exchange. I hope she enjoys it, and that you do too. Feel free to review and let me know.**

**Lemons, blood letting and a little tying up. ;-)**

* * *

><p><strong>Velvet Ribbon<strong>

"Oh my God, Damon, that tree is bigger than the one in the town centre!" Elena's eyes bulged as she took in all twenty feet of enormous Christmas tree that now dominated the boarding house. The whole room smelled wonderfully of pine.

"Well Elena, size matters and I don't disappoint." Damon did his eyebrow thing and Elena rolled her eyes in response.

He chuckled and poured himself a malt.

"Have you got lots of guests coming tomorrow?" She asked with curiosity, walking towards the mountain of gifts at the base of his tree. The pile was coordinated in shades of gold and each gift was tied with thick, expensive looking, purple velvet ribbon. She wondered if he had brought in a team of professionals to set it all up. It certainly looked magnificent.

She also wondered how much of this was for her benefit. After all he knew how much she adored the Holiday and this tree and the gifts made her feel ludicrously warm and fuzzy inside. She reached out and grabbed a candy cane off one of the branches and turned to face him. He had to suppress a lustful sigh as she sucked unconsciously suggestively on the stripy candy cane.

"Just the one guest. And she better not peek until midnight, or Santa will take them all back to the shop." He replied.

She almost choked on the candy. "Are these all for _me_? Damon, you can't be serious!"

He said nothing, but his lips curved into a slight smile. She crunched the candy cane up quickly, then dropped to her knees and began searching through the obscenely large pile of presents. True to his word, each one bore her name written in Damon's delicate hand.

"Damon..." She didn't really know what to say, but she had to say something. "I can't believe this, this is too much. You told me I was under strict orders not to get you anything! You totally cheated." He sipped his drink and his eyes sparkled in the firelight. "Damon, I'm serious. I feel awful. I can't possibly accept-"

"Oh, shush. Who else am I gonna spend my money on? Just enjoy it." He shrugged off her righteous indignation.

"Damon, I... I don't know how to thank you." She said more softly this time.

"Then don't." He smirked. He reached forward and flipped the big hand of his wall clock around a couple of turns. "Well, in a particularly happy coincidence, it seems that it has just turned midnight. So now you have to open them, or they'll turn into cabbages."

Her concerned look became a playful smile. "Cabbages?"

He nodded. "Well known Christmas fact. Gotta open those presents before dawn, or they turn." He pointed to a gift that looked suspiciously like a book. "Start with that one."

She gave him a sideways look. Damon was often playful, but usually at her expense. Tonight he seemed to be showing her another side of himself, a childlike exuberance for the Holiday season. If she didn't go ahead and open his gifts she would clearly hurt his feelings. Besides, she had to admit it, she was dying of curiosity. Especially about the big one that was lying in the centre of her Aladdin's cave of goodies...

"This one?" She asked pulling out the gift he pointed at. He nodded.

She carefully undid the velvet ribbon and let it slide to the floor. The thick sheet of gift wrap practically opened itself. Inside was a leather bound, well thumbed book. She turned it over in her hand so she could see what the title was. Shakespeare's Sonnets. A first edition, signed by the author.

* * *

><p>Soon the pile of discarded wrapping paper was almost as tall as the tree. She sat crossed legged in the middle of it all. Pooled at her feet was yards of the beautiful, luxurious purple velvet ribbon.<p>

She tried several times to tell him to put some presents aside and give them to her for her birthday, but he was having none of it. If she didn't open them quick enough, he would lean over her shoulders and rip them open for her. Beside her now was a stack of gifts that she just couldn't even begin to thank him for. Aside from the near priceless book, was the SLR camera she had been craving and the membership of a photography night-class to go with it, the perfume she loved but couldn't justify, the silk scarf she had admired in passing... Every single present was something that at some time or another she had expressed an interest in during the time that she had spent with him over the summer.

Finally she opened up a framed photograph. She looked at the black and white picture with great interest. The beautiful but solemn woman who stared back at her had incredibly kind eyes. She knew who it was without even asking.

"Your mother was beautiful."

"I know it's an odd kind of gift, but you said you really wanted to see her. You can put something else in the frame."

"No. I'd never do that. It's lovely."

"The photo is a copy I'm afraid, because it's the only one I have. Stefan has a couple more somewhere, but he keeps them locked away. I don't think he likes to look at her."

She turned to look up at him. "You have her eyes."

"You think so?" Damon looked down over her shoulder at the picture.

She smiled. "Yes. You do."

He smiled back at her, but there was sadness there too. "Stefan feels guilty, but he needn't. Her death was not his fault." He took a breath, then pointed to the largest box of them all, changing the suddenly sombre mood. "One left." He said. "I don't know how you could leave that until last. If it had been me, I'd have gone for the biggest box first."

As she opened the gift, she had to kneel up to remove the lid. Inside was tons of shredded tissue paper. She felt around in the box and gave him a puzzled look when she couldn't find anything.

"Keep digging." He said.

She began to delicately pull out the tissue paper and he leaned over her and began to chuck fistfuls of it into the air at vampire speed, making her laugh. Eventually they found what was inside. It was a little wooden box. She looked at the box with curiosity. It was nothing special, just a plain, dark-wood box. When she opened it inside was an odd shaped stone, about the size of the top of her thumb. She took it out and examined it. It had sharp edges, but beneath its grey, dour exterior, she could tell something inside glistened when the light hit it. She turned to look at him with a confused expression.

"One day, you may want to take that to a jewelers."

"What is it?"

"About six carats worth of pink diamond."

Her eyes widened and her hands began to shake as she looked at the stone again. Now she knew what it was, she could tell it was huge.

(Damon chose not to tell her that it was probably worth more than all the jewelry in Mystic put together. He'd pulled the diamond out of his bank safety deposit box that morning.)

"Try not to lose it." He said with a smile.

"But Damon, I can't accept this!" She stood up and reached out with a shaking hand to try to give it back to him.

"What am I going to do with it? Nothing! A diamond like that needs the perfect home. And personally, I think it belongs on a pendant..." He touched his index finger very lightly just above her cleavage, "just here." He let his eyes meet hers. She blushed at the obvious flirtation. He was so dangerous when he was like this. Charming but guileful, generous but shrewd. She'd never met anyone like him, and she knew she never would again.

"It's too much, _all_ of this, I can't possibly..." She began to say.

"You'll offend me if you don't accept it. I want you to take it. Please." He closed his hand around hers, so that the diamond pressed into her palm.

"I...I don't know how to thank you, I..."

"Then don't say anything. Just promise me that one day you'll wear it. Maybe with nothing else." He winked.

Words failed her so she nodded. She couldn't even tell him off for his cheeky throw-away comment. He let go of her hand and walked away; moving to his decanter and pouring himself another drink. She could tell that he was pleased with the way things had gone from the spring in his step.

She looked at the diamond in her hand, then back to the pile of gifts. His generosity was over the top. He'd been wild and impulsive just like everything he ever did. But he did it to please her. He did it because he wanted her heart to beat faster when she thought of him. He wanted to make her smile, to see her happy - because he loved her. And that was more worth more than any gift.

She put the diamond back in the box then pushed it deep into her purse. As she bent down, she spotted the pile of velvet ribbon. She picked up a length of it and ran the soft fabric through her fingers. She chewed her lip thoughtfully - her mind racing. She looked at Damon's back thoughtfully. He had moved over to the fireplace and stood before it with one hand on the mantel and the other nursing his drink. He seemed relaxed and happy. She loved to see him like that - it was far too rare.

And suddenly, like a bolt from the blue, Damon's happiness was all that mattered to her - because it made her happy too.

She pulled the ribbon in her hand around her neck and slowly tied it into a bow. She took a deep breath and walked over to Damon by the fireside. Every part of her was shaking at what she was about to do.

"Damon?" She touched his left shoulder and he turned to face her. He spotted the bow immediately and he put out his free hand to touch it. He smiled. "Hmm, pretty. You should wear that again."

"It's gift wrap."

"Well I know, but it doesn't look like that, on you I mean, it's-"

"No, you don't understand. I mean it's _your_ gift. I think you should unwrap it." His intelligent eyes scanned her as he understood her meaning. She said it again. "Unwrap it. You wouldn't want your gift to turn into a cabbage now would you?" She gave him a coy smile. He put down his glass.

When he turned back to her he looked her straight in the eye. His voice was quiet but firm, his face marred by a frown. "Elena, I don't want you to think that I wanted, or intended, for you to feel that I was trying to buy your affection. I mean I'd would never-" She interrupted him by taking both his hands in hers. The familiar lurch in her chest and the jolt between her legs and told her this was what she wanted.

"Unwrap your gift, Damon." Her voice was soft. Seductive.

He exhaled as he looked into her eyes. Oh God how she wanted this. Her body shook with anticipation and need. This had been so long in coming, it was time to stop fighting it. She wanted him so badly, she always had.

He was so close, looking into her eyes and trying to decide his next move. She gave him a shy, sexy smile. He put his hands up to her neck and very, very slowly undid the bow. The ribbon slithered apart in his hands and he looked at her with a fiery intensity. His lips taunted her with their proximity. She wanted to lose herself in him. She wanted to kiss him more than she had wanted anything in her whole life.

His fingers gently moved against her skin as he worked the ribbon free. When the knot was undone, he gently pulled the fabric away from her throat. She could feel the softness of the velvet as it slithered across her neck. He stayed close. His eyes searching hers.

She reached up and placed a hand around him, slipping her fingers into the soft hair at the nape of his neck. "Merry Christmas, Damon." She whispered as she leaned towards him and slid her lips across his.

* * *

><p>It was only when she pressed her aching body against his that he responded, pulling her close and running his hands all over her with urgency. She could feel the pressure of his palms on her back, her behind, in her hair. He drew his tongue across hers in a deep and arousing kiss. Her body felt like it was melting, whilst his hardened against her.<p>

"I want you inside me." She whispered breathlessly into his mouth. His lips slipped against hers as she thrust against his chest. He wanted to consume her. The sexual tension that had built up between them for months and months was now finally being released. His kiss was more to her than that though. It was a request - a request for her to love him like he did her.

She slid both her hands into his hair and lost herself in him. She felt his fingers splayed across her ass as he pulled her tighter. She could feel just how much he wanted her now their bodies felt like one. They kissed so long and so hard that when he briefly pulled away, her lips stung.

He left her panting and desperate for more. When he looked at her, it was as though he had no idea that she could be this way; so wanton, so full of desire. She curved her lips into a smile and seconds later he was back for more. She could feel when he moved his hands to her face, that he still had the purple ribbon looped over his fingers. She broke their kiss and took it from him. She wrapped an end around his wrist and tied it into a bow. She took hold of the long end and wrapped it around her own wrist a couple of times. He stared openly at her as she tugged on her home made leash, forcing him to chose - be lead, or refuse her.

* * *

><p>She walked backwards at first, leading him away from the fireplace towards the stairs with a look on her face that promised him everything he had ever dreamed of. He followed obediently, too turned on to even attempt to give her his usual cocky smile.<p>

Eventually she turned to face the stairs and pulled again on the ribbon, leading him behind her. The leash remained taut between them. She walked slowly, looking provocatively back over her shoulder as she began to ascend the stairs. She knew he watched her hips sway as she walked. His face was a mixture of desire, longing and need. She could get him to do anything she wanted to at this minute. The sense of power was overwhelming. Her body buzzed with it.

As she got to the top of the stairs she stopped, turned back and placed her arms onto his shoulders. She looked down to kiss him. He placed his hands around her waist as her lips met his. She rolled her head back and he trailed light kisses over her collarbone. He groaned with need and moved to pick her up with his hands under her ass, but she stepped back away from him and gave him a corrective tug on his leash. "Oh no you don't. My leash, my rules."

"You try and keep me tied up like this, I'm going to have to punish you." He said, his eyes glinting. His voice gave her goosebumps.

"Promises, promises." She whispered close to his lips, knowing she was daring him to act.

Her boldness shocked her. Who was this person she was when she was with him? She barely recognized her. And from the look on his face, he didn't either, but he clearly liked her. He flashed a devastating smile and with a ridiculous burst of speed the ribbon was off his wrist and he had sped her into his bedroom.

* * *

><p>In a flash he had their roles reversed. She was lying on her back with her hair spread across his pillow, her arm was stretched out behind her and her right wrist was being tied firmly to the bedstead. Damon was straddling her body. His intense blue eyes looked down at hers when he finished. He leaned closer and kissed her softly. She took in his unique scent. A mixture of cologne, musk and raging hormones.<p>

"You think this little ol' ribbon is going to keep me here?" She teased.

"Hmm," he said kissing her throat, "perhaps you're right. I better rectify that."

He was gone. She missed the weight of his body pressing her down into the soft duvet beneath them. Suddenly he was back again. She found her other arm being gently lifted upwards and her other wrist being tied to the bedstead with another length of velvet ribbon.

"Mmm, I don't think the army had this in mind when they taught me knots."

She tipped her head back and looked at the bows. He had been thorough. She would have to trust him.

From his position straddling her hips, he placed his hand behind her neck, leaned forwards and raised her head off the pillow to kiss her. "Now," he said delightedly, "I have you where I want you." Only Damon could make such simple words drip with such promise.

He lowered himself to nuzzle at her throat. As his lips touched her skin, her own lips parted. She was lost in him already; his closeness, the feel of his touch on her skin, his very presence. She sighed as just a stroke of his hand down her arm sent shivers into every bit of her.

Her breathing became more rapid as he continued his unhurried journey south, kissing her and slipping her shirt open one button at a time. His fingers trailed over her breastbone. When the shirt was fully open, he let his cool hands slide under her back and undo the clasp of her bra. He slid the satin cups upwards, revealing her trembling breasts. He smiled. He let his thumbs run gently over the skin of her delicate rose-pink nipples, causing them to gather and harden. She heard a sigh escape her lips. She arched a little beneath him, causing him to lean down and take each of her breasts into his mouth, letting his tongue explore where his thumbs had been.

He sat back on her hips once more and put a hand into his pocket and pulled out the silk scarf he had given her. He dangled it over her skin and traced a corner delicately over her navel, up over her torso and across her naked breasts. The cool, satiny fabric felt delightful on her warm skin. He skimmed it over her bra and across her throat, then captured the loose end with his free hand.

"Any last words?" He said, eyes sparkling as he twirled the scarf into one long length.

"I regret nothing. Do your worst!" She said defiantly, her own eyes sparkling too as her lips curved into a smile.

He gave her his familiar cocky smile as he tied the scarf around her eyes, blindfolding her. "Can you see anything?" He asked and she shook her head. Suddenly his lips were right at her ear. "Good."

Elena's breathing became ragged. She really was entirely in his hands now. Her chest rose and fell rapidly as she responded to his touch. Little moans of pleasure escaped her lips as he began to make his way down her body again. She felt herself pulling in her stomach muscles as he began to kiss across it. He let his knees take his weight as he leaned forward and took each breast greedily into his mouth once more, nibbling gently with blunt teeth.

She cried out, arching up beneath him, the feeling between her legs throbbing. She knew he would be able to smell her arousal, and something about that embarrassed her. It was as though all her secrets were out in the open for him.

The more tense she became, the more his touch made her body feel like every nerve ending she had was on fire. His tongue flicked, licked and teased across the contours of her skin. His lips sucked, caressed and closed around her. When his lips weren't on her, his hands were. Shrouded in darkness without being able to touch him back, she was at the mercy of his caresses. She could hear her own voice as she moaned and could sense he was finding it increasingly hot from the way he grew bolder and more insistent. She curled her legs around his back, desperate for him to climb inside her.

His body felt warm and heavy against her, his lips firm and smooth. His kisses were sweeter and more gentle than she ever imagined they would be. His tongue flicked across her lightly, moistening her skin so that it cooled in the air. Suddenly his weight was gone again, and it was clear he was no longer on the bed.

"What's happening?" She said nervously, cursing the fact that all she could see through the silk scarf was a reddish glow in her peripheral vision.

"You've been a bad girl, and now I get to be a bad boy. Fair's fair."

He gently straightened her legs and reached up and under her short denim skirt. She felt his fingers curl around the scanty fabric of her thong, and he began inching it down her legs. She lifted her hips up and assisted him, her heart racing. He took his time, delighting in her inability to do anything but roll her hips for him. She thought she could feel his breath on her legs, but she couldn't be sure.

She was so nervous. Thoughts tumbled over in her head from insecurities about what he would think of her, to a desperate need that made all the hair on her body stand upright.

Her panties were being slipped over her ankles, which left her feeling truly naked. She could feel the bed give as he climbed back onto it to one side of her. She could sense the shadow of his body covering her. Her previous confidence began to ebb away. She was beginning to feel exposed, vulnerable.

Damon hitched up her skirt until she could feel the dark triangle of hair between her legs being revealed. Suddenly he became still. Her heart would not stop pounding. Instinctively she pressed herself deeper into the bed beneath her, trying to hide her nakedness when really she had nowhere to go. His sudden silence unnerved her. She jumped when she felt the gentle pressure of his hand on her thigh, pushing her legs so she couldn't curve away from him. He was enjoying the view.

"I've always said Brazil's a much nicer place to visit than Hollywood..."

"Damon!" Despite herself, she let slip a little laugh, despite the fact he caused her to violently blush. She didn't need to see his face to know there was a smile there. All the same, she was grateful her recent trip to the beautician had not been wasted.

His weight shifted once more and she felt him reach for something at her side. Suddenly she could feel her right foot being lifted slightly and a length of the velvet ribbon was glided under her calf. Her heart pounded as he tied a bow around her ankle. She blushed as she felt her leg being tugged to the right. He was tying her legs to the bed posts. She turned with the movement onto her side, trying to keep her legs together. He saw what she was doing and he took her left foot in his hand and stroked it as he said, "Now, now. No wriggling. Remember, you started this. You only have yourself to blame." Then he was quickly beside her ear again, leaning down and whispering - his breath tickling her cheek. "Trust in how beautiful I find you." He kissed her cheek softly. No sooner had he been there, he was gone.

She felt heat rise in her cheeks as her left leg was similarly tied, pulling her legs apart. She was left exposed with her skirt gathered around her waist, her bra resting unnaturally above her breasts, and her shirt lying open. She was tense, he must have seen that and she felt him brush the backs of his fingers over her thigh in a gesture that was meant to calm her.

She tried to relax but suddenly it felt as though the scarf that rested on her eyes was taking away her ability to breathe. He moved off the bed and she could feel his lips press against the tough skin of the sole of her foot, but something about the tenderness with which he kissed her there made it feel as though he was kissing her lips.

Before she could get used to the sensation, his lips began to trace across her feet. His tongue lightly licked between her toes, causing her to shiver. He explored first one foot, then the other, she tensed again, but this time because the sensation made her whole body buzz.

Beneath the blindfold she closed her eyes and felt her eyelashes brush the silk. He made a sound which was somewhere between a sigh and a moan as he continued to kiss up her leg, his lips tickling first her ankle, then the side of her calf. He paused at her knee, rubbing both his thumbs over her knee cap as his fingers rested in the hollow behind, occasionally stroking. She never knew that part of her body could feel like it did now, and she emitted a sigh of pleasure that caused his lips to form a smile against her skin.

"Oh God..." She uttered.

He continued kissing up and onto her thigh, gripping her leg firmly - controlling her. Suddenly she wanted his fingers inside her. She arched her back, rolling her shoulders into the deep feather pillows. His lips brushed over her inner thigh. She ached for him; her clitoris pulsed and sent shockwaves through her entire body.

"I want you naked. Now." He said suddenly and before she had registered what was going on, she could hear the coarse, loud ripping of denim as her skirt was taken apart like paper in his hands. He moved on to her bra, which he snapped at the front and then he ripped her shirt from the hem upwards until it was in tatters. As he worked, she could hear his breathing growing more and more ragged.

Each rip took her slightly by surprise, and she jumped as he straddled her again. He was not shy about her feeling his obvious erection against her chest through the fabric of his jeans. His final task was to lean down and tear the straps from her bra. As he did so, he could not resist finding her lips again, and she was almost surprised by the eagerness and pressure of his open-mouthed kiss. He moaned as he took her lips in his, his tongue silkily sliding over hers as his right hand manipulated her breast greedily.

He pulled his lips noisily. She lifted her head from the pillow wondering where he had gone. Suddenly he was between her legs. She gave a sharp cry as his tongue pushed between her folds, sliding over her flushed, swollen walls. His hands rested on her thighs, holding her legs even further apart. It felt as though all her nerve endings were on fire. She bit down on her bottom lip, trying not to come too soon.

She rolled her head back, every sensation in her was heightened. Even the peachy fragrance of her own hair made her feel sensual. It was crazy. It was as though everything tiny thing had taken on its own erotic charge. To say her whole body tingled was an understatement - it was like the fire between her legs swept under her skin burning her up in an uncontrollable lust. She hoped it was the same for him too.

She rolled her shoulders back as her mouth fell open once more. She panted as his tongue slid across her vulva, her moistness a mixture of his saliva and her own juices. He was stroking her legs with his hands, her thighs tingled where he touched them.

The restraints at her arms and legs, what he was doing to her... She was in overdrive. She was losing her sense of anything but the need for him to be inside her. The ribbons dug into her wrists and ankles as she pulled rigid against them.

She mumbled something incoherent. Whatever it was made him smile against her skin. He slid his thumb across her clitoris, and let his tongue join it, lapping at her juices, unashamedly building her up until she knew she knew she could hold back no longer. She felt wild. Feral. Not human at all.

He pushed two fingers inside her, twisting and turning them until she bucked her hips so hard he had to put a restraining hand on her thigh to stop her knocking him away from her. She wanted to rub herself like a cat over all his dark places and mark herself with his scent. His thumb busied itself at her clitoris, and she couldn't hold back from the heat that built inside her.

She roared her release as she came.

She could feel herself dripping over his thumb. It didn't stop him, if anything it just encouraged him. He kissed the skin of her inner thighs as she contorted beneath him. He lightened his touch, slowing the movement of his thumb over her sensitive flesh until she was begging for more pressure. She cried out as waves upon waves of sweet energy pulsed through her body. She yanked at her restraints as he pushed his tongue inside her again. He resumed licking at her until she cried out, "Holy fuck, Damon! I'm gonna come again!"

"Good." He said, plunging his fingers inside her.

She was almost in pain from the second orgasm that tore through her body. Her heart felt like it was bursting out her chest.

"OH MY GOD!" She yelled and she completely let herself entirely go like she never had before, not with Stefan, not with Matt - not with anyone.

Her body arched and he lapped and lapped at her, his tongue slipping and sliding over her taut bundle of nerves until she was ragged. She collapsed back on to the bed, begging him, "I... I can't take any more. Please stop!" She panted.

"Oh, I'm not done with you yet." He said, giving her a quick kiss on the thigh before moving off the bed. She heard the sounds of him disrobing. Who'd have thought that the simple sound of a zip's teeth parting would get her so riled up? She felt her chest rising and falling with anticipation. He climbed over her body, moving one hand at a time, until he was level with her face. She could feel his length pressed against her wet folds. She couldn't help herself, she thrust her hips upwards and rubbed herself over him, pulling back his foreskin and sliding over his ridged cock. He made a guttural sound and began pressing down onto her too, rocking back and forth. The pressure of his cock rubbing against her almost enough to make her come again.

She could feel him lean close to her face and heard that familiar click which meant his fangs had revealed themselves.

"I intend to have you. And there is nothing you can do to stop me." He said.

She wanted to play his game, she was writhing in ecstasy and she spoke without thinking. "Get away from me, you devil!"

He laughed. He reached down between his legs and guided himself into her. He filled her easily, pushing hard at her wet walls and sliding them apart with insistence. He moved until he was as deep inside her as he could be. She twisted her head to the side and he licked a spot on her throat, his tongue dwelling on the dip of her clavicle. Then as he found his rhythm, he bit her neck hard and fast, causing a ripple of pain that made her muscles spasm and contract, causing her to constrict around him.

They were both crazy excited. She could feel his breath on her face, his weight on her body, his length inside her. There was the blood loss and the little sucking sounds he made as he drank from her. God only knew what secrets her blood would reveal to him, but she was beyond caring. She wanted nothing more than to slide her hands across his tidy ass and pull him even deeper inside her. Fortunately he was thrusting with enthusiasm enough for the pair of them.

"Harder!" She begged, and he did as she pleaded. His hands took his weight as he moved inside her. She felt her whole body pushed and pulled in his rhythm against the restraints. Her wrists were beginning to feel the blood loss too, and she knew the blood had been driven to other places. He withdrew his teeth and she could hear his face change back.

She reached her apex as he thrust inside her, hard and unrelenting. His right hand slipped under her raised arm and his fingers dug into her shoulder blade as he pushed himself into her body with increasingly desperate breaths.

Suddenly he reached up and pulled open the ribbon at her left wrist, and she wriggled her hand free. She didn't lift her blindfold or even release her other hand - she put her hand straight on his ass and pulled him even deeper, relishing the chance to feel his soft, smooth skin. She ran fingers up and down his spine, and rested them in the dip of his back.

"When I'm done, you're won't be able to walk for a week." He promised.

"Fine." She replied equally breathlessly.

He reached up and undid the other wrist restraint. She yanked off her blindfold. He pulled out of her and both of them rushed to work on freeing both her ankles. As the ribbons slithered free and she pulled her legs up, there was a second when they momentarily stopped and looked at each other with equal fire in their eyes.

He launched himself at her and they tumbled over and over wrapping themselves in the duvet until it was not clear where she stopped and he began.

In the darkness he looked down at her, "I love you, Elena." He whispered simply. "I love you too." She replied.


	6. Cimmerian

**I should have posted this when I wrote it, but I didn't, and now the series has kind of bypassed it.**

**I debated not posting it, but I thought, 'to hell with it, some people might enjoy it anyway'. So here we are... It's very angsty.**

**If you enjoy it, please review.**

* * *

><p><strong>Cimmerian<strong>

**'Cimmerian' - people who dwell in perpetual darkness**

"Don't go."

"Elena," He sighed, rubbing his hand over his eyes. He felt tired. He never felt tired. "You can't ask me that. You have no right to ask me that."

She was silent for a moment, then she spoke again. "Don't go."

He cradled the phone in his hands and closed his eyes. Damn her. _Damn_ her.

"And if I stay, what then?"

She couldn't answer that. Or wouldn't. It amounted to the same thing.

"I think you know. I think you know that for me to stay is only going to end in pain for one of us. If I go... well."

"Damon-"

"Stop. Don't say any more. I'm hanging up now."

"Damon, I love you!" She spilled out. His heart stopped. The phone was an inch from his ear, frozen in the moment of hanging up. He closed his eyes and kept them closed. Returned the receiver to his ear. She was crying.

"Shhh." He soothed. "Shh, don't cry -" but she was already lost to it. The words she uttered were more dangerous to him than if she had stuck a stake right through his heart.

He winced. He had a stabbing pain in his gut and his head throbbed. He swallowed thickly.

"Listen to me. You are going to forget about me, and -"

"Never!" She exclaimed violently. "I'll never forget you because I won't have to." She was desperate, "You said you would never leave me again. You lied."

"Don't do this." He whispered, his voice cracking. His resolve was seeping, ebbing away into the nothingness. "This is how it has to be."

"Why?"

He grew angry. "Because I won't share you. You're too important to me. And neither will he. And despite everything, he's my brother, Elena."

"We both love him."

"Yes."

He sighed, ran a hand over his tired eyes. Perhaps this was the night for confessions. His final night. They had already said too much. Spoken too clearly.

He sat down on the edge of the table and let his head rest on the window pane watching the rising moon. Just hearing her speak let the pain ribbon its way into his heart. He couldn't do this any more. Couldn't want her any less. He had to leave. Tonight. Now.

"I have to go."

"Don't hang up!" She begged. "Damon please, tell me where you are. I'll come. I'll be there in minutes. You can't -"

He raised his voice. "I have to Elena. Don't you understand. This is tearing me apart..."

"Then be with me!" She cried out. This wasn't what she wanted, to beg him like this, he could hear it in her voice - but she offered it to him anyway. Herself. Her body. Anything to keep him here.

"No." He shut his eyes again. Felt his face crumple with pain.

She fell silent. When she spoke, her voice had lost that pleading edge. It was replaced by shock. "You don't want to be with me?"

"Not whilst you love him."

She was quiet at that. He knew he should hang up, but he couldn't make himself. His whole body _roared_ at him to hang up the phone, but his heart... his heart betrayed him. His heart just wanted to wallow in the sound of her voice.

"I... I can't live without you." She said.

"Yes you can. You must. He'll protect you. He'll love you. You _know_ that." He was getting angry again with her now. "I'll find a way to kill Klaus and I promise you'll be safe. But I can't be here any more."

"Damon, I'm scared." He knew she didn't mean about Klaus.

"Elena, please... Let me go. You have to." He was begging her now. He rolled his forehead against the cool glass.

"No. No. No."

Each refusal hammered into him. He winced. Even Michael's hand on his heart hadn't hurt like this. Nothing did.

"Damon, tell me where you are?"

"No."

"Damon!" She howled. The dam of tears she had been holding back finally burst. His name became the only mantra that her lips could utter.

His hand closed into a fist - fingernails digging into his palm. Every muscle in him ached with tension.

"Goddamn it, Elena..." he said weakly, his own voice cracking.

His head echoed with the sound of her body being wracked by deep, wheezing heaves. He opened his fist and splayed his fingers, feeling the window pane cool and smooth beneath his hand. It looked as though he could hold the moon from here. He pressed his fingers firmly to the glass and felt himself crumble one bit at a time the longer he listened to her cry.

He made a soothing noise into the receiver. His anger all but gone with the ferocity of her tears. She was trying to catch her breath; it came desperately, like a drowning woman surfacing. As she grew calmer, he knew it was time he gave a voice to the thoughts he never spoke aloud. The whisper he denied, even since that whisper had become a roar.

"You know I love you," he said softly into the handset, "isn't that enough? If I stay, it's torture for all of us. We can't be together. Not in the way I would want us to be. You know that."

"Tell me where you are?" She demanded, through sniffs.

He shook his head. "No," He wanted to be held. He couldn't be. "I've already said too much. It's time for me to go."

"We'll find him, and we'll speak to him!" She said. He could hear the desperation in her voice. She was keeping him on the line. Desperate for him not to hang up. "We'll tell him everything."

"You think he doesn't already know?" He admitted sadly, "Oh Elena, you know he does, and that's not going to help. The thought that he is losing you is eating at him already." Actually, it was eating away at _all_ of them.

"I don't want you to go." She pleaded almost petulantly.

"I'm doing this for you. For him. You know that. Dammit Elena, I love him too!"

For the first time in his life, he wanted to be unselfish. It was a feeling he wanted to cling to. It helped fill the void.

She began to cry again. Not like before, not great big gulps, but a constant stream of painful tears. She was grieving what might have been.

"I'm not good enough for you." He spluttered to fill the silence. To stem the flow.

"That's not true!"

"I'm not the person you need."

"Maybe I'm not the person _you_ need." She responded angrily.

Stalemate.

He removed his hand from the window, stood up and walked around. Neither of them said anything for a while. He listened to her blow her nose and presumably wipe away her tears.

"What about Ric?" She asked.

That threw him. He shook his head. He understood the words on their own, but when he tried to get her meaning he was lost. "I - I don't under-"

"What about Caroline? And Jeremy. And Bonnie. You gonna leave them too?"

Oh. She really _was_ desperate. She knew this wouldn't work. His fingers on the handset stretched across the phone. He could smell the chemicals in the plastic.

"Elena-"

"I want to make love to you-" She said.

"Don't say that!" He raised his voice again. "Don't say those words! I'm forgetting you ever said that." He imagined her mind ticking over, knowing what she'd said had got a response. He was as discombobulated as she knew he would be. She pressed home her advantage.

"I'll kiss your lips and hold you in my arms-"

"Elena, stop. Please stop." He was pleading her now. His breathing heavy.

"Don't leave me, Damon. Not now."

"Don't ask this of me."

There was silence. She took a breath.

"If you go, I don't know what I'll do -"

The threat contained in those words was not lost on him.

"Don't you say that! Don't you say that to me!" He said fiercely, the lump in his throat hardened; he actually had to blink back his own tears.

"I won't live without you. I can't." She said in a whisper and then the phone line went dead.

"Fuck!" He dropped the phone and ran at light-speed to her house, not caring if anyone saw him.

* * *

><p>He slid open her window and climbed into her bedroom. He almost breathed a sigh of relief to find her slumped in a corner sobbing her eyes out, because at least it meant she was alive. He grabbed her by her shoulders, pulling her to her feet, not caring if his fingers bruised her.<p>

"Don't you _ever_ say those words to me again!" He said shaking her. She turned her face away from him. He pulled her suddenly against her chest and threaded his arms tight around her. He cupped the back of her head and rocked her, "Shh... Shhh...". He closed his eyes too and felt her pain.

* * *

><p>As he held her, he could feel the erratic beat of her heart. He smoothed his cheek against her silky hair. She smelled as she always did, like Summer rain. He moved her to the bed and sat her down, placing an arm around her shoulder. She found a Kleenex up her sleeve, and she used it to wipe her eyes.<p>

"You won't go?"

She meant not tonight, and of course she knew the answer before she asked the question. He shook his head. No he wouldn't go.

If he was honest with himself, he had always known that her implied threat to herself had been just that - implied, and desperate. There had been no need to dash here at light speed. Perhaps he had needed that excuse to bring him here? Maybe he didn't need an excuse at all.

No, the truth was he had been sincere in his need to separate himself from this awful, painful situation. He wanted to leave town and never come back. He regretted the deal he had made with his brother that would embroil him in a murky revenge on Klaus.

"So what now?" He said miserably, dropping his arm from her shoulders and pressing his hands on his knees. "You don't want me to leave and yet I can't stay. What do I do?" He looked at her, and she met his eyes with shared pain.

"I'm going to find Stefan. Talk to him."

"And say what?" He said unhelpfully, a touch belligerently.

"I don't know. I guess that I need to be with you. That I want to be, free." She finished gently.

He looked away. His familiar twins of frustration and anxiety churned over and over in his gut.

"Elena, we can't do this. You must let me go, please -" He was no longer above begging. He knew he was helpless to act without her telling him to leave. And yet she wouldn't say the words.

He closed his eyes once more. "Please..." he said softly to the air - to God - to anyone that would listen.

Her hand gently raised itself to touch his face, lifting his chin, forcing him to open his eyes and meet hers. As soon as he met her gaze he knew how lost he was. It wasn't even a fair fight.

"No..." When she spoke, her voice was soft; the word insistent, yet earnest.

"No," she repeated. She pressed her plump, salty lips to his. Held his face in her hands. Caressed his skin.

"No," her lips parted as she leaned forwards and captured his. She ran her tongue lightly over his bottom lip.

"No," she pressed against his body, thread her arm around his shoulders and her fingers into the hair at the nape of his neck.

"No." She said one final time, the word catching in her throat. He was in freefall, lost in the sound of that single syllable.

Her eyes glistened with emotion - with love.

* * *

><p>All his hope of escape dissolved as he fell into her. He placed his arm around her back and lay her gently on the bed, brushing the hair from her face and stroking her cheek before he even knew he had moved.<p>

She pulled him closer and he leaned into her body, pressing himself down on her until their lips collided. He indulged in the feel of her body beneath his, the pent up desire surfacing in her caress. She placed her hands under his shirt and ran them over his back, hooking her leg over him possessively, keeping him close. She wanted him. He could smell her arousal - taste it on her lips...

He tumbled over with her so that she was now on top of him, and he kissed her as though this were the last kiss he would ever know. Her legs slid either side of him as he held her close. She moved against his growing erection, grinding her body against his.

Suddenly he pushed her away. Before she understood what was happening he slid out from under her and moved to the other side of the bed. He willed himself to ignore her look of hurt and disappointment as he clambered to his feet. Breathless and bewildered, she sat upright, tucking her hair behind her ears with trembling hands. Confusion marred her otherwise flawless face.

"What's wrong?" She asked.

"_This_ is wrong," He said, trying to convince himself. "Stefan's hell bent on revenge and I've promised to help. He doesn't need me to steal his one reason for not losing himself permanently."

"Damon, I don't know that I can wait for him to find himself again. I need to be with you."

"I need to be with you too. But I owe him my life. This can't be how I repay him."

She stood up, walked over to him and captured his hands. He tried to ignore the fact he could taste her still. He tried to bury his feelings again, but it was too late for that. She left a gaping wound in his heart, head and soul.

"I'm not sure he wants to change." She mused.

Damon shook his head. "It's not true. He's desperate to change; he's just lost."

"How do you know?"

"Because _I_ was lost. And then I found you...And you changed everything." He spoke almost angrily, his voice wavering.

He dropped her hands and walked away, ashamed that she stripped away his layers and revealed his lonely, needful, human heart.

"Oh, Damon..."

She was moved by his words. She walked towards him and ignored the fact that his back was turned to her. She threaded her arms around his waist and held him tight, resting her head against his back. Eventually he covered her hands with his own and let their fingers intertwine. "I'm glad you told me that," she continued, "because you've helped me understand."

He frowned. Turned his face a little towards her. "What do you mean?"

"I mean I know now why this hurts so much. I wanted to be the one to rescue him - to be the one that made him return to himself. I thought that was the same as loving him, but it's different types of love. It's not the same love as I feel for you..." She stroked her cheek across his shoulder and let her lips drift across the nape of his neck, sending a shiver down his spine. She squeezed the fingers she still held gently.

"What are you saying?" He asked.

"I'm saying you _should_ help him, because you do owe him. And _I_ will help him, because I owe him too. I'm saying we kill Klaus, or whatever it takes to help him leave the ripper behind, because we are his family and _that_ is how we love him. But what I feel for him, is not what I feel for you." She paused. "Damon, you'll never have to share me and you won't be betraying him - because I am yours. I think I've _always_ been yours. And one day he'll understand that too."

He turned in her arms and took her face in his hands, looked at her with his anxiously. "Don't say what you can't unsay."

"I'd never do that to you. Never. Listen to me, please. I need you to hear what I am saying. Damon, my heart belongs to you."


	7. Scraps

**Scraps**

It was three in the afternoon. Damon was sat outside the Mystic Grill drinking a double espresso and enjoying the sunshine, when over the noise of the waitress cleaning tables, he could distinctly hear a high-pitched whine. At first he ignored it, catching the waitresses' eye and requesting the check. But as she brought it to him and he began fishing for change in his pocket, he was distracted again by the sound of the whine. It was clearly an animal, and it sounded scared. The waitress began looking at him oddly, until he realized he had underpaid her. He scrabbled for more cash and added a generous tip.

He got up, and was about to walk to the car lot to prevent himself getting a ticket, when the sound bothered him again.

"Damn it!" He muttered under his breath, knowing he had to go check it out.

He followed the sound, which took him down a side alley of the Grill and out by the trash. He reeled a little at the smell, placing his hand over his nose and mouth while watching where he was treading too. He heard a yelp, and his eyes traveled down to the source. There looking up at him from under the wheels of a large blue trash can, were the small bright eyes of a tiny, dirty, Jack Russell puppy. The pup couldn't have been more than four weeks old and was so small it could have fit in the palm of his hand.

Damon crouched down and looked the puppy in the eye. The dog splayed its forepaws and yelped angrily at him. Damon smiled. He liked fighters, and goodness knows how long ago this dog had been abandoned and living off the Grill's refuse. The pup seemed to regard him, turning it's head to one side with one ear pointing upwards before yelping again. Damon put out his fingers and the dog sniffed them and then began licking them.

Damon didn't consider himself much of an animal person, never had. But damn it if this dog wasn't just about the cutest thing he'd ever seen.

"Hey, you found Scraps!" A voice said behind him. The Grill's chef had opened the kitchen door and was lighting up. Damon straightened up.

"Is that what you call him?"

"Her actually."

"Oh. Yeah, well I think it's kinda the other way round actually, she found me."

"She's a stray. But she's tough. The guys all feed her - but this ain't no place for a dog. The manager is gonna find out about her soon enough and get animal control out here."

"That so." Damon muttered more to himself than the chef, who was taking a long drag of his cigarette and appraising Damon closely.

"Honestly, I thought she wouldn't make it as long as she has. I'd have kept her, but the wife says 'Billy, no more damn pets.' We already got three cats, a tortoise and a budgerigar."

The puppy came out from under the bin and began sniffing around Damon's feet, finally deciding she was going to chew on his shoe lace. Damon looked down at her - she upgraded to gnawing on the leather.

"Look! She likes you." The chef said cheerfully, pointing at her with his cigarette. "Well, she ain't got much of a future, but I guess that's the way of the world, right?" He flicked his cigarette into the alley where it joined a load of other abandoned butts. "So long buddy."

If he expected a response from Damon, he would remain disappointed. After a final look at the dog, the man walked into the restaurant closing the fire exit firmly behind him.

Damon picked up his foot which the puppy was pouncing on, and shook her off. She yelped at him, but stood her ground and barked furiously. Damon sniffed, thrust his hands in his pockets and walked away. When he got to the end of the alley he could hear her whining again. He stopped, looking at the street rather than the alley behind him, trying to think about what he had to do for the rest of the day, when the dog whined again.

* * *

><p>"Hi Damon, what are you doing here?" Elena said, leaving the group of girls she was walking home with and going over to his car as it pulled up beside her.<p>

"Get in, I need you to stop this thing ruining my leather seats." He said gruffly.

Elena looked in the passenger side to see the tiniest, cutest, puppy looking back at her.

"Oh my God!" She exclaimed, "She's so cute!" Her girlfriends were hovering nearby, waiting to see if she was going to rejoin them, so she turned and waved them away. She immediately returned her attention to the dog.

"She's not cute - she's already ruined one pair of Italian brogues." He said. Elena didn't buy his attitude for a minute.

"I can't believe you got a dog!"

"I didn't. You did."

"Oh no," Elena shook her head, "no way - she's yours." She put her hand into the car and the puppy ran over to her to sniff her fingers and she wagged her tail so ferociously that her whole body moved. "She's so sweet!"

"Yeah well, she's filthy and she probably has fleas. So she's all yours. Get in."

Elena picked up the puppy and Damon threw open the door to her. She sat with her on her lap, he started the engine and pulled out.

"She's so tiny," she exclaimed as the puppy licked her hand. "Surely she should still be with her mom?"

"She's a stray. She'd been abandoned."

Elena looked at him long and hard and tried to suppress a smile. Damon Salvatore, puppy rescuer. She resisted the temptation to tease him.

"Where are we going?"

"The vet."

"Okay, I'll come with you, but you know there is no way I can keep this dog. For one Jer's allergic (haven't you seen how he always sneezes when Tyler is around?). And for two, she's so little, she won't have been weaned yet - you're going to have to feed her through the night. I can't do that right now, Damon, I have mid-terms."

Damon went silent and chewed his lip for a bit. "Fine. I'll get her fixed up, and then I'll re-home her. Or give her to the pound. Whichever is easiest."

"What's her name?"

"Scraps. Apparently."

"Aww. I like that. It's cute like she is."

Elena smiled as Scraps licked her hand again. She gave her a scratch behind the ear. "You are never gonna part with this dog."

"Oh yeah? Just watch me. Dealing with flea bitten mongrels is my speciality," he looked over the rim of his glasses at her, "just ask Mason Lockwood."

* * *

><p>She went with Damon to the vets, and then on to a massive warehouse store on the edge of town called Pet Paradise, where he had bought all the things the vet had advised him he would need. She then helped him carry it all into the boarding house. It was a huge pile of stuff, from the pamphlets the vet had given him, to the puppy food, dog blankets, training cage, collar, lead, toys. Or rather, <em>she<em> carried it into the house whilst Damon carried Scraps in his jacket pocket.

"How can something that small have just cost me the best part of a thousand dollars?" Damon complained. "I should toss you back in the trash where I found you." He grumbled to the dog whilst simultaneously tickling her under the chin.

"Where do you want this stuff?" Elena asked, straining under the weight of it all.

"Put it over there. I'll deal with it later."

Elena heaved all the purchases into the centre of his lounge and raised her eyebrows. She guessed it was too much to expect a thank you.

"Well, I guess you've got it from here?" She said, brushing her hands down her jeans. "Damon?"

He was busy inspecting Scraps' ears.

"What's that?" He replied absently.

"I said, I guess you've got it from here?"

"Oh yeah, sure sure. Abandon me in my hour of need."

Elena rolled her eyes. "I'll come by tomorrow, see how she's getting on."

"Yeah, if I haven't chucked her out before then. No no! Oh no you don't! Don't wee on the carpet! Come here."

"Bye Damon!" Elena laughed as he grabbed Scraps and zoomed at Vampire speed past her and into the garden.

* * *

><p>"How's it going?"<p>

"She wees on everything. I've had to pay another three hundred dollars to get her wormed and I've put ads in every shop, local paper and the Grill and _still_ there are no takers."

"Really? But she's so cute." Elena smiled as the puppy dozed on Damon's lap as he sat on the couch. A lot had changed in three weeks. Scraps was far more robust than she had been back when he took her in. Now all cleaned up you could properly make out the caramel patches on her otherwise white coat. She had a pale pink collar that settled against the soft hair of her neck.

"Yeah, well, a few people have come by, but you know none of them were suitable. I mean they either had totally unacceptable houses, snot-nosed brats, or great big dogs and stuff - and I don't want her to be bullied."

"Uh-huh-" Elena was again having to suppress a smile, "so exactly how many people have you vetoed?"

"I don't know, about five. Ten. Maybe a dozen."

Elena bit her tongue to stop herself from laughing. It was probably best to change the subject.

"So apart from the potty training, does she do what she's told?"

"Yep. The first time she tried to do something I didn't like, I showed her my fangs and that cut _that_ nonsense out for good."

"So she knows who is top dog then?" This time she did smile.

"Yep." He said giving his dog the eye. "Watch this..." He scooted the snoozing pooch out of his lap, despite Elena's protestations to leave her sleeping. When Scraps jumped onto the floor, she looked at him with the same expression she gave him when he found her under the trash. Her head tilted to one side, her bright eyes fixed on him and one ear pointed into the air. Damon lifted up his hand and closed the fingers together, and she immediately lay down without him having to say a thing. He made a rolling motion with his hand, and she rolled over. Elena cooed appropriately.

"Oh she's adorable! Damon she loves you, you can't possible get rid of her!"

"She's a total nuisance. I haven't got the time to babysit a dog."

Elena leaned down, gave her some strokes and then began rough-housing with her. Scraps mouthed at her hands, her paws scratching at Elena's wrists as she rolled her over and over playfully.

"Scraps, go fetch your ball!" Damon suddenly said, and immediately she bounded out of sight, her paws making a clattering sound on his plank floors.

"Keep her Damon. You know you want to."

"No, I don't. I have another family coming in about two minutes to look at her actually."

"Well then, I guess we should get her ready. Where is her ball?"

"I buried it, at the bottom of the garden. She'll find it. She likes digging."

"Damon they will want to meet her, not run all over the garden to find her."

He shrugged his indifference.

* * *

><p>Elena watched as Damon asked question after question of the family of three who turned up to view Scraps. It became almost embarrassing how he grilled them, trying to find a flaw in their suitability. Despite his obvious reluctance to believe it, it was clear they were the perfect people to take the dog.<p>

Their sweet little boy, who was about eight years old, pushed his glasses up his nose and kept sweeping his eyes across the floor hoping to catch sight of the puppy he had come to meet.

"Erm, do you think we may be able to see her now?" The mom prompted gently, after Damon had hit them with another round of ridiculously tough questions.

"I"ll go find her." Elena volunteered. She jumped up and walked into the garden calling Scraps' name. The little dog was playing in the centre of the lawn with the ball that she had found, pouncing and running around it. Elena went over and picked it up and tossed it towards the house, Scraps hared after it and brought it straight back to her. "Good dog!" Elena said impressed at her obedience. Scraps quietly sat at her feet waiting for the ball to be thrown again, her little pink tongue lolling between her teeth. "Come on inside, there's a nice little boy who is dying to meet you," Elena said, before feeling silly for talking to a dog.

Scraps trotted along beside her, and as she entered the house, the boys' eyes grew wide. He looked at his Dad for permission to stroke the puppy and it was given to him with a nod. The whole family voiced their delight and bent down to greet the little dog, who happily wagged her tail and ran around all of them. Elena gave the ball to the boy, and Scraps immediately ran to him, causing him to look totally delighted.

"So, how large is your garden?" Damon said sourly.

"Sizeable," said the dad, "maybe not as large as yours... Wow! It must take you a week to mow it!" There was a polite laugh from his wife which the husband joined in with.

"You do have a beautiful house, Mr Salvatore." The wife added, desperate to make up some ground which she could see was necessary.

"Scraps is used to a big garden," Damon snapped, ignoring the compliment, "I'm not sure I can let her go to someone who has a smaller one. Fencing?"

"I beg your pardon?" The mother replied somewhat bemused.

"Do you have fencing?" Damon spelled out, somewhat rudely.

"Er, yes, I put it up myself. It's a very secure property - I can assure you." The father answered.

"Hmm..."

Elena cast her eyes over to Damon and frowned. She folded her arms over her chest and heard herself sigh. She was going to have to put a stop to this. It just wasn't fair on anyone.

"I'm so sorry, but I think we have made a mistake. The dog is not for sale." Elena said.

Damon looked at her horrified. "Elena? What the...?"

"I'm so sorry to waste your time. You're clearly a very lovely family, but Scraps is just too precious for us to part with." She added politely.

The family looked very disappointed, but said they understood and they bundled the heartbroken little boy out of the house.

"What were you thinking?" Damon said to her angrily as soon as they were gone.

"Damon, I'm not going to stand by and let you find a dozen stupid reasons not to give that dog to the perfect family. Admit it, you love her and you don't want to let her go."

"Nonsense."

"Look at that face," Elena pointed to Scraps, who was chewing happily on her ball, "and tell me you don't love her." Damon looked at the dog who immediately cocked her head to see what instruction he was going to give her. When he didn't say anything, she picked up her ball and walked over to him and dropped it by his feet. She sat down and her tail wagged like a feather duster on the floor.

"Damon, you bought her a pink collar. _Pink_." Elena continued.

"It was the last one in the store."

"Look me in the eye and tell me you could get rid of that dog."

He looked at the floor. "I could send her to the pound tomorrow."

"No you couldn't."

"Yes I could."

Scraps nudged the ball closer to his feet with her nose. She started to whine. Damon continued to stare at her.

"Play with her."

"No."

"Damon, don't make me use my angry voice. Tell me you love this dog."

"Won't."

"Fine, I'll take her then." She bent down and picked her up, putting her under arm. The dog wriggled to get free and began to bark.

"You're holding her wrong! She likes being held under her tummy."

"Not your problem any more." Elena said, closing the door behind her whilst Scraps licked her hand.

He opened the door and yelled after her, "I thought you said Jer was allergic?"

"Oh she's gonna sleep outside, in my garden - without a fence. Might get hit by a car, but what do you care?" She yelled back over her shoulder.

She placed Scraps in her car, and then went to the driver's side. After she started the engine she stopped to look into the soft brown eyes of her traveling companion.

"Don't you worry, Scraps, I give him until midnight. He'll be begging to take you back."

* * *

><p>When she got home, she found Ric was making dinner. "Hey, what are you doing with Scraps?" He asked, bending to say hi to the little dog.<p>

"Teaching Damon a lesson."

"Oh -" Ric raised his eyebrows. There were so many reasons to think that Damon needed a lesson to be taught to him, that he didn't even bother to inquire further. "Do you think she's hungry?"

"Probably. Have we got anything to feed her with?"

"I've got some left over chicken? If we are careful to de-bone it, I bet she'd like that."

"Sure, sounds great."

Jer entered the house at that moment. He tossed down his bag, and then violently sneezed. He looked confused.

"Elena, is there a dog in here?" He asked.

"Just Scraps. Don't worry, she won't be staying long."

"Why have you got Damon's dog?" He queried, "I thought he was never without her by his side?"

"My point exactly." Elena replied.

Jer didn't have a clue what she was talking about, but when it came to his sister and Damon, nothing surprised him any more.

* * *

><p>Later that evening Elena had the dog curled up on her lap whilst she and Ric watched TV. She stroked Scraps' soft ears. Jer sneezed again.<p>

"Okay, that's it," he said thickly, his nasal passages totally congested, "I'm going to my room."

"Don't worry, Jer, I reckon Damon is going to call in precisely... thirty minutes."

"Whatever, I'm outta here." He grumbled and took the stairs three at a time, sneezing at the top of them.

"You seem pretty confident about that timescale." Ric said to Elena.

"This is his whiskey hour. You know this is the only point in the day when he actually sits down. He's gonna miss this little critter cuddling up on his lap."

Ric smiled, "You're probably right."

"Oh I know I am."

Almost on the dot of midnight her cell rang. She looked at Ric and gave him a smile before answering. Upstairs they heard Jer sneeze again, followed by the exaggerated sounds of him blowing his nose.

"Damon, what can I do for you? Kind of late to be calling isn't it?"

"Give me my dog back." He said unhappily.

"But you don't care what happens to her. Jer's sneezing, so Ric's offered to drive me to the pound tomorrow. Animal control will take care of her. Well, for a week or two I guess - then who knows?"

"You win! You win okay? I want my dog back."

"Because you _love_ her."

"I'm fond of her. Bring her back."

"Say please."

"Elena Gilbert bring my dog back now or I will never talk to you again."

"Say you love her." There was silence on the other end of the phone.

"If I admit I love her, then it's the same as saying I need her."

Elena's brows furrowed and she lowered her voice, "And what's wrong with that?"

He sighed. There was a long pause, "It makes me feel weak. I don't like to need people - I mean things..." he corrected quickly.

Elena went quiet for a moment. "It's okay to need - things - Damon, it's alright to have - things - who need you back. Who rely on you, who love you too," Ric looked at her out of the corner of his eye. She shifted a little away from him, "That's what love is, Damon."

"Just bring my dog back, Elena." He paused briefly, before sullenly adding, "Please."

He hung up, and Elena was left listening to a dialing tone. She hung up too and looked at Ric.

"Was it just me, or did that conversation go a little off-piste?" Ric said.

Elena got up suddenly, causing Scraps to scrabble to her feet. "Come on pup," she said over-brightly, "we're taking you home!"

* * *

><p>As soon as Elena opened the car door, Scraps hurtled towards Damon. He tapped his hands twice to his chest and she leapt up into his arms and immediately began licking his face.<p>

"Argh, get off you annoying mongrel!" He complained, although he did so with a massive smile.

"You should be nicer to her. She's a lovely dog!" Elena commented.

"Nope. She might get used to it. And besides, she's kind of ruining my reputation as a tough guy."

Elena rolled her eyes.

"I hope you two will be very happy together," she said sarcastically, waving at him with the back of her hand as she walked back to her car, "almost as much as I hope she bites you on the ass."

She heard the boarding house door close and was about to step into her car, when Damon was in front of her with his hand on her door.

"Elena," he said, sounding earnest, "I just wanted to say that any time you want to come and see her, it's okay by me. I mean, you know, if you just want to drop by and say hi I won't mind."

His blue eyes shone brightly in the dark.

"I'd like that, Damon." She said sincerely.

They stood there looking at each other for a beat longer than was comfortable. She broke the silence first.

"Damon, don't be afraid to show your feelings. It makes you stronger."

He met her eyes for a moment, then nodded - looking away after. "I guess so." He said sounding doubtful.

He abruptly opened the car door for her. She climbed inside, and before he shut it, he leaned forwards and said, "Elena, the dog is not the only thing I need. There are other things - other people - who I can't live without." He shut the door quickly and was gone before she could reply.

She sat there stunned for a couple of minutes, unable to start her car because of her shaking hand and her fast beating heart.

She suddenly knew that she could let her mind accept what her body longed to do. She got out of the car and walked back to the boarding house, gently knocking on the door. Damon opened it slowly, with an anxious look on his face.

"I need you too." She told him.

The last thing she saw before Damon swept her into his arms, was a little puppy peaking out from behind his legs, with a head cocked to one side and one ear in the air. And then there was nothing but the feel of Damon's lips on hers.


End file.
